LOKRE2
by birkinsmith-88
Summary: Finally Finished it after all these years! A crossover between Legacy of Kain and Resident Evil, though I've tried to make it so that you need to prior knowlege of either of them... You decide if I've suceeded!
1. Part1: Awakening

(Note to LOK Fans: This is set during Kain's 200-year coma)

ALSO NOTE: This is a crossover between Resident Evil 2 and Legacy of Kain, However, I've tried my best to write it so that you don't really need any prior knowlage of either of the games to understand it, though it could add to the experience if you do I guess... Personally I think lacking knowlege of one of the games makes it better...

The first thing he was aware of when he came to was how cold he was… he was just… _so cold_… his skin was damp and sticky causing his bare chest to glimmer in the dull florescent lights. He didn't have the strength to pick himself up. All he could do was lie there dazed, the lights painful to his weak sight. He couldn't see. . . everything was so blurred… He had never felt so vulnerable since. . . ever. . .

His head spinned inside his skull and fragments of his memory fell into place … one image was of a man looking back at him through glass ... . a man in a white coat leering at him with his fingers interlaced, studying him like he was some sort of project… and he couldn't do anything to stop him from behind that glass… He couldn't move, he couldn't cry out… like he can't cry out now… He tried to say something, anything, but all that left his quivering moist lips was a slight whine.

A soft metal clinking from the distance got louder and louder until a pair of feet stood next to him. He looked a short distance up those legs but was far too weak to see who or what it was; his vision was blurred with exhaustion.

The feet kicked at him slightly, checking if he was still conscience, a pair of cold, gaunt hands wrapped around his bare arms and pulled him to up to lean exhaustedly against… whoever had pulled him up, though through his dazed state, the aroma of his captors blood struck him like a blot of lightning slicing right through the pain and suffering in his clouded mind.

His captor shook him gently; wiping whatever slime he was covered in off his bare chest and arms and parted his hair from his tired face. Tired from what? He had no memory of why he _was_ tired, where he was or who was helping him recover…

He moved his lips to speak but his captor hushed him with a soft shushing.

"Don't struggle too much just yet;" Said the deep voice of the man whom had plucked him from the cold floor. "Your body's still a bit stiff from the stasis."

"What stasis?" He asked in a feeble, angry panic. "What have you done to me you _bastard_!"

"You're not dead. Be thankful of that."

"You did this to me, _didn't you_!"

"I **_said_** you're not dead! It was in my authority to have you disposed of before the teams could come and I chose to release you. At least be thankful of that."

"… … I am thankful that you gave me a chance of _killing you!_" He writhed in the mans grasp but he was too weak to do anything… he was weaker than this man… he was at the mercy of a mortal and he didn't like it. He had never been so aware of true defencelessness… and he _hated_ this man for making him feel this way. "Let go of me, you putrid piece of human _filth_."

"Your wish is my command." And with that, the man dropped him to the floor, to the slime from which he had plucked him. He felt this head and body smack wetly against the cold steel grating of the floor the man adding to the pain, adding to his humiliation… "I don't have time for this." He heard the man, his voice becoming slightly distanced as he walked across the room, his footsteps clanking softly around a form of a large desk, then a shuffling of papers mixed with the worn-out incoherent complaining of the man as he complained to himself about the state he kept his workspace in.

The slime-covered man pushed himself up on drained, shaking arms and flicked back his hair, sticky with whatever slime that man had put all over him, and took the time to actually see whom it was who was belittling him like this.

An anaemic, gaunt man was shuffling through the papers on a desk of a highly disorganised work surface. The mans eyes were what caught his attention the most… so cold…When He was pressed up against the man the scent of that mans blood seeped into his senses but he would have never would have guessed that such a cold soul rested behind those eyes. There was no mistaking the eyes; they were the windows to the soul…

"I do wish you'd make yourself scarce, as I'm expecting a little company right about now." He said, reaching down below his desk, a shredding sound while he pulled something out that was taped to the underside of the desk. He sighted this small and pathetic black object across the room before sighting it firmly on his slime-covered head.

"And just what is _that _pathetic item?" He asked sarcastically.

"This" Began that _strange_ man. "is a pistol, or more commonly known as a 'handgun', named after the metal they were manufactured with. It fires six chemically projectiled bullets per magazine and can quite easily kill you with one well placed bullet." His eyes widened and he naturally became very enraged that this psychotic was aiming this weapon directly at his forehead. "Get up. Now." He didn't obey. A slow smile spread across the mans moist lips. "You think I wont pull the trigger, don't you? I set you free out of appreciation of the past few months; you've let me make a fabulous bio-weapon out of your D.N.A and for that I am … mildly grateful, but I _will_ kill you if you get in my way." A long pause ensued.

"Just tell me what's happening…" His voice became low and gruff, seething with an irate confusion "you at least owe me that, don't you?"

The man smiled and nodded, surprisingly. He didn't seem to want to waste time arguing with him, and just thought that if he told him everything then there would be no more need to go in annoying little circles to avoid discovery if he knew all he needed to know…

The man took a deep breath, and then quickly began the tale.

"When you were unconscious and healing in your sleep, we abducted you, sedated you and placed you in a tank where you were pickled in an artificial amnionic fluid, fed you oxygen through a pipe and monitored you in this strict scientifically maintained environment so that tests may be run on your highly mutogenic, highly superior genetic code. We slowly duplicated your physical attributes in an identical chamber to yours, only we patched in gaps with our own set of codes and thus made ourselves a bio-organic weapon of you… only it still remains incomplete and now those _bastards_ from Umbrella want to steal my G-virus; the virus I used to make a weapon out of you and I'm going to try to skip this town with my wife, child and virus in a bid to preserve my life's work… but… You… you're a bio-weapon in your own right; evolved this way naturally, rather than mass-produced. You're a one of a kind, and when they get here they would've pulled the plug on you."

"So assuming all this is true;" He hissed "You so _kindly_ released me out of sentiment." He question was more of a statement punctuating the irony of a merciless scientist, cold enough to abduct him as he slept and run all sorts of tests on him, would be humane enough to set him free when a team was on its way to have him destroyed anyway.

"I suppose your phrasing is true…" He replied all while shuffling through his papers feverishly. "I guess I am kind of sentimental when it comes to this sort of thing…" He brushed back his hair, his thin fingers shaking as they parted his shining dark hair and beads of sweat ran down his ghostly white forehead, accumulated at the bottom of his brow. His eyelashes became heavy with large, salty drops of his unnerved sweat and he wiped it away quickly as he scanned the desks, the shaking palms of his hands and most noticeably of all, a large black case on the middle of the desk. "God, I've wasted my life… " He muttered. "Umbrella robbed me of my youth… and now they want to rob me of my life too!" The rage in his voice was unmistakeable. He slammed his fists down on the desk, shaking all over and then his breathing became disturbingly erratic until it finally choked up into short, sharp inhalated bursts. He let his trembling head droop down onto the desk and brought his hands over him, hunched up, unable to control his breaths; he was slowly suffocating from his hyperventilation.

His former test subject ignored this however. He slowly wept the slime from his inhumanly white skin and examined the draws for his personal belongings that had been taken from him before he had been put in the amnio; his red shawl-like robe and a few harnessed that strapped the loose cloth to him-

-And he smirked down at the object that glimmered back at him in the bottom of this draw; Voradors signet ring that was made of a metal that was compressed human teeth polished to a shine and with runes painted in blood.

Kain took the ring in one clawed hand and felt the bottom of his earlobe with the other, searching for the hole in which his piercing would go into but he did not find it; it must have healed up. No matter; he pushed the needle through anyway, practically used to the pain was he, and wiped his blood from his ear after he was done. All while he did this, that insane scientist was having a freak out only two meters away.

Kain watched in enjoyment as the eerie scientist got grip on himself once more, infact, he got much more self control back than was comfortable for Kain; the man had just had a panic attack and now he had nerves of steel once more… The sudden transformation just wasn't _normal_ in a human…

"You better get going now." Said the scientist in a completely smooth voice, unblemished from fear or doubt. "They are coming with intent on taking my life's work but I shall not give it to them. They'll have to kill me first and I don't want them to kill you too. I've ruined too many lives in my time and you would just be one too many." One of the mans damp hands rested on the large black case and with the other, he pointed the deadly weapon at Kains' chest. "Get out."

Kain took on a mocking attitude. "But we haven't even been properly introduced yet"-

-A bullet whizzed past his arm and nicked the flesh there.

Kain reeled back in feeling pain and shock that that petty human would _dare_ injure him but didn't have the time to maim or roar at the idiot as he just kept pulling that trigger. Bullet after bullet narrowly missed Kain and clanged off the metal behind him.

"**Get out Get Out _GET OUT!_**" Shouted that insane bastard firing bullet after bullet at his test subject who dodged bullet after bullet and raced for the door. The mad scientist even bothered to change clips after one ran out!-

-But he ran out of clips after he had unloaded three from firing rapidly at Kain but that didn't stop him from pulling the trigger.

_Click click click! _Was the only sound in the sterile room. Kain stalked up to the scientist, his disgust and rage for that highly troublesome lesser form building with each heavy step. The scientists clicking gun slowly 'clicked' to a stop. A very embarrassed stop. A stop that was full aware of its impending doom.

He backed up anxiously against the desk as Kain pressedhis pale body roughly against _that_ scientist making his anger apparent, making it plain that he intended to kill him. "Think-of-my-family." He blurted out suddenly

"But I don't _want_ to hurt your family, do I?" Kain hissed. "I want to kill _you._"

-As Kain finished his sentence many almost silent footsteps in the distance were unmasked. They were systematically searching each room of the facility, the organised thumps slowly coming this way. "They'll kill both of us." He said quickly, jumping at an opportunity to extend his life. "This is a dead end; they're coming and they'll kill us both."

"I _seriously doubt_ that _any_ mortal weapon can take me out; just look at your little pistol there…"-

-"They could be packing better heat than that." He said hurriedly. "I heard that some sub-machine guns can fire thirty rounds per second. I honestly doubt even _you _would be capable of dodging that."

Kain took a step back from the man, finding his life unwillingly in his hands.

"Then what do you suggest I do." He asked monotoned; barely a question; much rather a statement.

"Hide; That's all you can do. Unless you want them to shoot you down of course."

"I don't '_hide_' from anyone, mortal."-

-"It's all right - I wont tell on you." Kain let the argument drop; talking to this man… it was as though he planned this argument long before it even happened…. It seemed there was nothing he could say to escape the fact that he had to do what he was saying.

"They could kill you too…" Kain said, planting once again the prospect of death in his mind and waiting for him to hyperventilate again as Kain rounded the desk.

"I don't care…" William muttered like an ill-tempered child and he continued on muttering as he opened that big black case, gun in one hand.

A white mist burst into the air with a hissing that caught Kain off guard and made him flinch. -

-"It's… sheer perfection…" Said the scientist to himself, as though Kain and everything else that was happening to him was no longer relevant. "My _precious_ G-virus…" The scientist hazy appreciation suddenly took on a more sinister edge, the maternal look in his eyes steadily oozing into an overjoyed and sick smile that spread across his damp lips as he gaze over racks and racks of purple and green tubes. He pushed a rack of greens shielding the purples aside and gradually with great ecstasy, almost orgasmic ecstasy, slipped one sample of mauve jell from its position amidst its brothers and brought it close to his face admiring a God-like beauty that only he could see. –

-William again changed into an entirely different person; now his face became wrinkled in a defiant frown. He swallowed down a lump in his throat, a lump that had an ominous affect on his voice when he concluded;

"No one will _ever_ take you away from me…" –

- Kain's eyes were drawn from the scene as something behind the mad scientist moved… two black objects passed the window viewing just outside the room and instantly later, the whirling of electronics flailed the room as the door to the lab opened. Kain had already ducked behind the end of the desk when the two armed men barged in.

The scientist swiftly clicked closed his black case with his empty handgun and virus sample still in each of his hands but in his haste to safeguard his work, He kicked a chair back across the room. Kain couldn't see weather he had done it on purpose to make them notice him or by accident out of fear of his life but it defiantly drew their attention.

"There he is!" Kain heard, along with a metallic sound, a sound he recognised from when the scientist armed his deadly weapon, only the deeper tone of _this_ noise made Kain become conscious of the fact that these mens' weapons were larger, heavier and capable of so much more carnage…

"So you've finally come…" Kain heard the scientist say, training his empty gun on the two fully loaded machine-guns. The sorry sound that was his voice revealed that he was almost accepting his own defeat… but his reply did not give such impressions. "Sorry, but I wont just… '_hand over_' my lifes' work…"-

-Something metal struck the floor with a bang that _sounded_ like a gunshot and the scientist let off a short gasp of surprise. One of the armed men behaved in a much more notable manner, and instead of a light gasp let a hail of bullets rain down on the scientist who fell in sharp, immense pain… And ultimately, the sickly sweet scent of his blood permeated the room.

"Stop it!" Called one armed man to his wildly firing companion. "You might hit the samples!" The firing stopped, and in a very unceremonious fasion, Kain heard them step over the scientists' body to the case that he had given his life for.

"That's it alright." Said the trigger happy one

"Okay; let's move out!" And with that they were gone, their footsteps leaving by far faster than they'd come.

Kain didn't wait to check if the cost was clear. All he knew was the blood that had bombarded and tormented his sense was being spilt on the floors. If he was quick, maybe the body hadn't bled out just yet and there was still a chance that Kain could finally get the blood he wanted from the mad scientist. -

-Only the mad scientist wasn't dead yet.

Barely alive and riddled with holes but alive nonetheless, the scientist slouched in a pool of his dark blood with the most _agonising_ look of defeat in his pale blue eyes. His life-force was so weak that Kain couldn't sense it from his hiding place but only now when he was in his direct company could he feel that faint glimmer of life that he must have felt too-

- But footsteps began again, running rapidly in this direction but notably not heavy footsteps...

Kain hid once more but from his vantage he saw someone run past the window. A woman. A blonde woman in a lab coat.

She gasped in an exhausted jolt of horror at the sight of her fellow scientists on the brink of death.

"William!" She breathed "Oh _my_…" She ran up to him. "Hold on darling… I'm taking care of that bullet wound first…" Her words were tired; she knew he probably wasn't going to make it but she couldn't stand seeing her 'darling' die and ran back the way she came in a vain crusade for something to help him with.

After she was gone, Kain revealed himself again and slowly walked to the front of William whom was struggling to breath with so much blood leaking and bullets riddled all over his body. He was awash with his thick, dark blood; most of it pouring out of his mouth and nose. Kain was honestly impressed that he was managing to stay alive with such sever injuries.

"No amount of bandages and nursing can heal you now 'William'"

William slid the empty handgun across the floor weakly in the direction of Kain. "Take it… It's like you said; I wont be needing this anymore…"

"I don't need it."-

" I've studied you, Kain!" He yelled, spitting blood out as he went. " I am… full aware of your … skills. I wouldn't be giving this to you … if… I didn't think you … needed it…" Kain took the empty weapon simply to entertain a dieing mans wishes. William continued. "I…" He gargled through his slimy blackish blood. "I … uh intend to … end thu…" He swallowed a mouthful of his blood so he could finish his sentence "this…"

"I can make this stop..." Said Kain. "the pain, this nightmare, but that's all I can offer you... A blow to the back of your head… It'll be painless. It's probably the best way."

"Oh-how-very-**_noble_**-of-you" He burble out of his bloodied mouth in angry sarcasm. "And who'll finish _you_ off, Kain? After I'm through, I guarantee you won't make it out alive."

Slowly, William revealed what he had clutched in his _left_ hand, forcing a smile though the intense pain he must have been feeling.

-He was holding a sample of G-virus-

"I don't care." Growled Kain but suddenly after his statement William thrust the virus at him, threatening him with death by his virus.

"I can make it stop…" He repeated Kains words with an ironic smile of his dying face. "The pain, this nightmare, but that's all I can offer you." Kain realised William's determination to make those men pay and for the first time for as long as he can remember, a slight glimmer of unnerved fear knifed through his cold persona and Kain both hated and respected William for that.

"…" Kain moved over to the door, sensing, _knowing_ that what William was about to do was **_Very_** bad.

"And by the way…" William panted before Kain left. "My name is William Buh…" He swallowed heavily. "Birkin…" He made a gargled sigh. " I have a wife and a little girl, I work**_ed_** for Umbrella… and… I died at the age of 32… "

"What?"

"You said we should get properly introduced…so there you go, Kain… My name…" He raised the sample over his chest with both hands "Is William Birkin!" and with one last huff, he poured all his strength and courage into his final action he would take in human form; he plunged the syringe and the G-virus deep into his body.

Kain knew this was very bad, very _very_ bad but before he could escape the room, William flicked his head up in one sharp movement and **_stared_** inhumanly at him with pure red eyes. William slowly rose up on legs that _should_ have been drained of all energy and just stood unwavering… The dozens of bullets no longer had any affect on him whatsoever…

That was it. Kain was out of there. Briskly walking (as he would _never_ run from a _human_) out the door, Kain felt his guts twist, in what _felt_ like fear when he saw what was happening through the window out of the corner of his eye: William wasn't quite William anymore… Something was terribly _wrong_ with his right arm! It was twice as long as it should be! Kain shot a look through the window and saw… His arm was no longer an arm but a mass of bone claws each as long as his original arm. Kain watched as William slowly turned his clawed fist over and examined its horrific mass with his emotionless face and red eyes. –

- And then those red eyes were placed firmly on _Kain_.

Kain ran, now satisfied that he was **_not_** running from a mere human and that it didn't count as an act of cowardice. Anyone who hung around to see what happened next needed their brain exami-

-_SMACK_-

Kain knocked the blonde woman flying, as well as the masses of bandages and metal instruments she was carrying over to the lab area. He stopped only briefly, feeling unusually benevolent to tell her;

"Don't go back for you're husband, Miss Birkin as you'll find he's not the man you married anymore." Kain felt amusement stir in his being at the jumble of emotions that tore across the woman as she looked up at him; Horror, rage, sorrow all flashed through her at the same time. He knew that women were emotional beings but this one just made him chuckle.

Her array of feelings finally settled on 'angry' when he started laughing at her.

"What the fuck are you talking about! How **dare** you say those things about _my_ William? What gives you the right to"-

- "Oh just shut up you stupid little woman." Kain rightfully interrupted. At this, the woman plucked herself up off her feet and somehow accumulated the nerve to get up and swing at him but of course Kain stopped her hand before it reached his face. She appeared enraged by his defiance but he could smell her terror she was holding back.

"How did you get out?" She barked, finally aware that he was the project her husband had been working on.

"William released me." Kain explained, talking to her as though she was a child, infuriating her even more. "He injected the G-virus into himself after you left."

"You lying **_bastard_**! You killed him!" she scuffled around kicking and even trying to bite him all while he had hold of her wrist, squeezing it so tight that he was on the brink of breaking her bones.

Kain twisted that wrist up behind his back and pinned her painfully up against his body. She moaned angrily but didn't struggle anymore, as he just simply pushed her arm upwards causing her immense pain. "You listen to me, pesky woman." He hissed in her ear. "Your husband is not human anymore. If you were to come into contact with him you will die. **_Do you understand me_**?" She nodded pathetically. "Because if I let go of you and you run in the direction I have just come from then I will kill you, because I would be wasting your blood if you died by his hand." –

- **_Gyraaah!_**

A horrific, mangled roar filled the air. Kain kicked the woman to the floor "Run." He instructed her. She jumped up straight away giving him a cautious look… she was deciding weather to tell him something…

"If you encounter any employees, don't hang around long enough for them to work out who you are." She told him. "They're instructed shoot any loose experiments." Kain nodded

" I thank you for the information." He started to leave

"There are manholes under certain points in the floor leading to the sewers!" She called to him. "It'll be the only way out of here in an emergency situation!" Kain nodded to himself but he abruptly turned back when he remember the corridor he had come from was a dead end… and that cry defiantly sounded a while away… How did William escape lest through one of theses manhole covers?

With the crazed woman's running footsteps disappearing into the facility, Kain went back the way he came, paying close attention the floor, looking for anything that looked like it might come away…

And smiled when he found what he was looking for; a section in the floor with a small indent where the finders would go in order to haul the panel up, only it was… unscathed. William had to have gone in here but it didn't have a mark on it, which was weird when you remembered that William was now just a mindless monster and not technically a sentient being capable of comprehending its actions… or was it? Was William more in control of his new self than one would presume? He defiantly seemed to have the sense to open the cover _and close it_ when he was done, rather than just smashing it in with his clawed fist, as he would do if he were an unintelligent being …

Kain opened the tunnel and climbed down the ladders into the lower levels of the laboratory. This area was defiantly more pokey than the upper levels; quite possibly where the lesser members of staff worked? The lighting was poor and tainted the white, narrow corridor a faint musky yellow giving this part of the labs an appearance of an old discoloured black and white photograph.

The corridor was utterly silent save for the heavy breathing of the adrenalin boosted Kain as he scanned the catacombs with his enhanced vampiric senses for any sign of life. He hushed his breathing to a subtle blur yet was rewarded with nothing; Not even the faint glimmer of a human heartbeat was detectable to his delicate senses. If William had really come down here, then his humanity should be unmistakable to mask…

"Where are you?" Kain brooded in frustration as the now no longer human mad scientist continued to elude his senses. -

-**_Gyraaagh!_**

The violent howl sounded once more and Kain used that one instant of terror to locate with his sensitive hearing just where the source of that mangled shriek was, and to his alarm, it was in surprising proximity to the vampire, yet he had previously been unable to detect him…

Kain followed the winding path of the corridors and with each sudden turn in the labyrinth, the anxiety gripped Kain that he might run into the man that had made that remarkable cry. Kain frowned in wry disgust that that hyperventilating, feeble, cowardly scientist was now such a powerful, fearsome animal already… This 'G-virus' of his wasn't to be sniffed at…

Kain came to a thick, steel door covered with strange locks and a blue painted number in a white box that read 'B14'. Was this 'floor 14'? 'B' however… what did that mean…?

"Basement…14?" Pondered Kain. Was this an underground facility? If so, it would explain why Kain hadn't seen a single window to the outside since he began his escape. It hadn't drawn any attention before… and if this was an underground facility, then he had to go up, not down. "_So if William is escaping after those wretches_," Thought over Kain in his poisoned mind. "_Then why is he too going down_?" Kain must've been on the right path, if so… The door seemed to have a numerical keypad by its side "_and William would have known the combination…"_ William was defiantly still sentient if he was able to retain knowledge of the combination, and it was unlocked, proving that William knew Kain would have to go this way… but it wasn't opening…

Kain rammed his fist enraged into the large red lock release button yet nothing happened, and he continued to do this up until a cold female voice in the form of an automated messaged spoke out through unseen speakers;

"_Warning; non-human presence detected in this area." _

- And Kain was non-human.

"Rrrrgh!" He growled in irritation. Birkin had inconveniently forgotten to mention that the laboratory was fitted with an 'Anti-B.O.W (bioorganic weapon)' lock, or so he read from the blinking green letters on the control panel.

Kain kicked the door with all his might yet the thick metal bulk of the entrance didn't buckle even slightly. Not willing to give up even vaguely, Kain rammed his powerful clawed fist into the numerical keypad and sent eerie blue streaks of electricity licking up the metallic walls like creeping, cold fingertips of the dead.

The electric dance subsided and the once sealed and impenetrable doorway opened right up revealing a corridor identical to the one he had just traversed.

-_Gryaaaagh!_

He once again heard Williams burble cry from a greater distance away than before and he dashed after it, yet for all his inhuman speed, he never caught up with the mutilated man… He never even caught any hint of the gigantic monsters presence in the sterile corridors… not even a faint glimmer of the scent of blood in which he had been bathed in purely minuets ago… what's worse was that Kain had been greatly weakened by his stasis, so much so that his memory was wanting in places and his former power had been greatly diminished; he could not summon the wolf form and track the mutant that way.

The stasis had left him as weak and as feeble as a human and it gave him all the more reason to hunt down the monster so that he would be able to make him pay for insulting him so. Kain couldn't work out just why he had spared the scientist for so long but he wouldn't make the same mistake twice; Kain didn't think about how much stronger the man was now. All he thought of was making him suffer for weakening him so.

Kain stopped once again with a snarl of irritation; another damn door was blocking his way, but on the plus side of his situation, this was the entrance to a service elevator.

-And it was in use-

Above the closed door were 46 small red square lights that each indicated a floor. Kain watched light number 44 blink on and off, then number 45, then number 46. He felt his hair rise up on the back of his neck as that light stayed on. He knew William was on that ride and it chilled his bones to picture it… -

- But it should -

Kain frowned, regaining his blind confidence when he remembered who he was. He shouldn't be afraid of _any_ mortal. No matter how powerful, no human man could ever surpass his skill; there was nothing to fear from the mad scientist.

Kain watched the blinking red squares slowly descend back down to his level with a self-confident smirk on his black lips. It was no great task to presume how the contraption worked. From the formation of the buttons, Kain easily worked out how to open and close the doors and set his destination to level 36 with the intent of tracking that scientist down like the worthless animal he had become, however, it appeared his task would become more interesting…-

_-"Your attention please;"_ Came the ever cold feminine voice of the labs computers, but in the relative safety of the elevator, the voice was distant and echoing.

Kain raised his eyebrows. Something inside him told him that this was bad… _"Unauthorised opening of; cage 3…. … Unauthorised opening of; …cages 5,… 7,… 8,…10…" _Kain folded his arms… He thought that it had stopped, then-

-"_Your attention please; _" Again repeated the icy female voice of the laboratories computer. _" Non-Human presence detected; levels, 21,… 23,… 27,…"_ Kain's sensitive hearing picked up an eerie scratching noise but from where, he couldn't tell.

"_14, … level …38, …level,… 39… This is not a drill… Thank you for your cooperation."-_

_**-BAM-**_

A pair of bone claws scythed through the steel ceiling of the elevator like it was paper and a horrific hissing came through the jagged metal gap it had made. It has missed Kain by only a hairs length and he ducked down hastily, looking up at the jagged hole left behind by the attacker and out into the blackness beyond: Something wanted in bad…

The only movement he could see was the glimmer of whirling cables and the flickering of blackness above but still he didn't let his guard down, watching the opening threateningly with his deadly yellow gaze… yet there was no movement whatsoever…

_-BAM-_

The bone claws struck again only this time from the walls of the elevator shaft and the claws narrowly missed the flesh of his arm. Kain dived back and span around in time to see something dart past the hole, climbing nimbly around the elevator structure itself, moving over to the wall Kain was against. He dived back to the wall where the gouge had been made, narrowly avoiding the claws again as they pierced the very spot Kain had been leaning against merely an instant before.

Now, Kain was more than a little angry. Snarling with rage like some crazed beast, he stretched up and ferociously forced the claw-made hole wide open, the metal protecting with shrill bleat as it was strained into an unnatural shape. Kain hauled himself up onto the roof of the ascending elevator and out into the bitter blackness of the shaft.

He stood hunched over and ready to move swiftly, mindful he didn't get his feet caught in the moving gears and cables of the mechanism he shared his foothold with. The constant drone of the working elevator impeded his efforts to detect his cowardly attacker by ear but after a few seconds of waiting, he didn't have to.

He turned in time to witness a horrific mass of snarling flesh dive up lunge howling enormously at him. He dropped and rolled out of it path of it's assaulting claws, his boot grazing a rapidly spinning axle causing sparks to burst forth from the clash, yet he forced himself away fro the deadly gears and leapt back up in less than a heartbeat, utilising his inhuman speed to an advantage against the insane creature.

It span around with its seemingly boneless body and hissed wit its saliva-drenched teeth at him. Kain admired it in its sick beauty; it was the size of a skinless man, yet there was nothing human about it's predatory movements. The only weakness he could see was the foolishly exposed brain on top of its eyeless face, the grey matter the only change of colour between its crimson flesh and tarnished claws. It was _NOT_ a naturally occurring beast; that was for sure.

After it had made it's rather clumsy rotation to face him, Kain expected the creature to strike again with its claws, only it didn't… It engaged in a rather unusual attack… It's lower jaw opened wide to an insane length, exposing it's many rows of long, needle-like teeth, but that was not what it was attacking with. -

- Kain lunged backwards and almost fell off the roof of the rising elevator when its tongue lanced at him at an alarming speed and length. Kain has just managed to evade it, but he was now teetering off the edge of the elevator; it would only take a small knock to send him plummeting 40 floors to his death.

The creature howled a strange distorted cry and used its seemingly frail back legs to propel its body through the air in a diving slash attack, but Kain was too good to be defeated by the likes of a nameless and insentient animal. He let himself fall from the elevator and the creature, unable to stop itself fell from the roof and plummeted into the blackness below, out his Kain's path forever.

Kain clutched onto the roof of the elevator with his one hand, dangling over the side, dangerously close to the sides of the shaft that raced rapidly past him. He stared down the blackness below, watching blankly as level after level went past. Looking up, he saw the top of the shaft racing rapidly for him; He couldn't risk going back in the way he came out but that was no problem for him; he drove his free hand into the elevators wall repeatedly, and soon a large hole was formed, a hole he widened and slipped into feet first just as the elevator reached its destination.

The grey double doors of the elevator automatically whirled open and let a disgusting flood of urine stench and he covered his nose in sheer repulsion. For all the accent of the service elevator it hadn't yet reached the surface but instead he was entering a sewer…

-Rapid gunfire resounded in the corridor, which was inevitably followed by-

_**-Gyraaaahh!**_

"_Wh…W… W-what was that?" _Came a human voice hushed by distance. More sounds of terrified cries _"Eat this you freak!"- _A hail of bullets resounded through the murky stone labyrinth_. "The bullets… arn't stopping it!"-_

-A wet ripping then a horrifying mangled human scream of a horrendous goring pain filled the air, then died, no doubt along with the mortal subjected to the sickening pain.

"_Hurry!_" That voice was remarkably close… Kain was barely meters away from the heart of the action, he had nearly finally caught up with what Birkin had become and wasn't going to give up the chase now; no manner of labyrinth could ever blunt his wrath. -

- But on the turn of the next corner, Kain unexpectedly ran face to face with two black-clad creatures. He couldn't make sense of them at first; he only saw red eyes staring directly at him, and goggles and a gas mask -

- "_These are the men that stole the virus"_ He hadn't seen them entirely when they burst in on the scene so rudely back at the lab, but there was absolutely no doubting who or what they are. Armour clad, cowardly humans wielding unnecessarily powerful firearms to replace a fighting skill Kain knew they all lacked.

"What the?" Gasped one, caught very off guard by Kain's unexpected appearance.

"It's the monster! Instructions are to destroy it on sight!" They jumped back and raised their machine guns, taking aim and Kain knew he wouldn't be able to dodge their rounds, and hoped like hell that the bullets wouldn't harm him as much as they had William-

- But something down the corridor to their right (Kain's left) caught their attention. Kain couldn't see what exactly, because the corridor kinked left just beyond him, but the black-clad armed cowards, they had a direct view of whatever it was down on their right side. Kain didn't take his chance to escape for he had come too far to be chased off now by two idiots, and he couldn't let himself back off so all he could do was just watched them…

They darted their heads round at the corridor just beyond Kain, and they _stiffened_ with fear. "W-What is this thing?"

_**Gyraaaahh!**_

That same violent cry Kain was seeking tore through the air like a serrated blade. It had been howled from human lungs that once loved to laugh and sing, and now they were full of pain and blood and though the noise _was_ a bloodied and agonising testament to the horrific creature William Birkin had become, the sound retained its eerily human quality, like the ghostly whisper of the wind after an aggressive explosion.

The infinite scream was very, very, _very _close; at the end of the corridor the humans were looking down even. William was meters away from them and Kain felt his hair stand on end even as the last weak echoes kissed the damp air.

Kain desperately hungered to kill William Birkin more than he even wanted to get back to Nosgoth but he just couldn't shake the feelings that were beginning to bubble up inside him. The knowledge of what he was feeling crept up on him like a snake in the grass, yet he told himself it wasn't; it just _couldn't _be … Kain hadn't felt _fear_ in his entire life; his insanity made sure of that, but in his current state of extreme weakness, fear was leaking through his insane rage and it made his senses spin in a startling manner, in ways he never felt before. Kain was becoming increasingly frightened, and it confused him so much he began to lose his footing, stumbling back a few paces across the slimy stone floor with his hands gripping his head. It just didn't make any _sense_… The two armed men now only a brief distance ahead of him where firing down the corridor frantically, like they desperately had only a little amount of time before something horrible would happen-

- One of the men screamed out in pain and was dead on the floor, his shredded corps bouncing coldly off the slimy brick before Kain had a chance to blink. The other black-clad coward dived off to the side and staggered in an attempt of balance, barely giving himself time to recover from the shock of evading the insatiable tornado of starling pain that swept up and tore apart the other man.

"Son-of-a…!" The surviving man opened fire again. Kain, still dizzy and holding his head, was alarmed by the sound of shots trajectory. Even in this vastly weakened state mixed in with this new insanity of fear he _shouldn't_ be hearing them wrong, for they sounded like they were being fired at _him_.

Kain stopped concentrating on maintaining his equilibrium and took in a deep breath to overcome the disgusting weakness of fear that had overcame him, collecting his thoughts to attain the strength and dispelling the weak humanity which was dominating his heart and thoughts. Before William had shamed him by strapping his unconscious body to scientific apparatus filled with amnionic fluid, Kain would have taken to the beast without a single sentiment of hesitation in his strong soul. Brandishing the Soul Reaver, he would have tore into the monster with full energy, dripping with so much rage and hate, showing his extreme pleasure in killing and maiming that he would even drive the fear of God into even the strongest of creatures. Now, he found himself too frightened to open his eyes to _see_ the monster he hungered to face. It disgusted him. This weakness… it was _human_. William had infected him with weakness and humanity and had selfishly infected _himself_ with unspeakable power, punctuating Kain's humiliation further. It's like William only let Kain live to suffer this humiliation he had prepared for him.

Kain beheld that unspeakable power at that moment. He saw the, the _thing_ from behind, the monster that was now almost _twice_ the size of the already freakishly tall man. From behind, Kain could see the soft brown hair on top of William's head, almost like a real human man, but the body was out of proportion in a way that couldn't be told accurately from behind. The white cloth of the lab coat across was stretched spotted with blood and filth. The right shoulder where the bullets mostly entered the scientist was bulbous and swollen, the extent of the injuries, Kain couldn't see it clearly from behind, but he was very much eager to see what the 'G-virus' had done to him.-

- The firing stopped and Kain realized the mortal had run out of bullets. Kain knew then the man was dead, and from the way he back shaking against the wall, rolling his head from side to side, he knew the man knew he was dead too. The last sounds of the bullets finished their metallic echo in the narrow stone tomb and the breathing of the monster could be heard. Each breath was raspy, deep and drawn out, panting like an insane beast, but the breaths were getting faster, heavier, _harder_, and suddenly the man screamed and there was a wet ripping of flesh, but not _his_ flesh; William's. William's shoulder split. A speckled spray of bloody and sinew blossomed forth from the wound as it wetly ripped to reveal a bulbous, slimy, dripping ball discoloured with gore and viscera; a giant _eye_ ball, and it rolled in its socket rapidly back and forth, and then it focused its piercing black beady centre on it's victim. Its victim gave out one last pathetic shriek before William went to work. His right fist exploded into the mass of tainted bone claws Kain had witnessed back and it rammed it into the chest of the man. Then, with his free hand, he slided it roughly into the open, dark oozing wound and then _tore_ the man in two like a rotten piece of fruit. The sticky wet ripping noise was incredible. Black and red blood and sticky, thick guts exploded onto the walls like they had been thrown onto the walls in buckets. The man that had been standing there had disappeared, and now in his place there was only sticky sprayed entrails slowly sliding, dripping thickly from the walls.

Kain didn't know how he was supposed to attack. The Birkin monster, which was still facing away from him, now bent slowly down, his jeans making the familiar rasping sound, and began to examine the torn remains of the dead man as though what had just happened was a trivial matter. It seemed to sniff at the blood on its claws and one normal hand-

- And Kain was suddenly knocked back by the scent of blood all around him. His fear totally dissolved into his bloodlust and he remembered what it was he fought for; the blood of life. He was not afraid. Fear was William's curse; bloodlust was the curse that ruled him and he would make sure never to forget it.

With the thick scent of blood all around him, Kain's desire for vengeance was momentarily preoccupied by the thick lust for the blood of the corps William had left before him on the floor. The syrupy red fluid oozed tantalizingly from the horrendous claw marks torn across the dead figures armour plated chest and for a moment, Kain realized just how long it had been since he had the sweet taste of blood wet his mouth. He was so very hungry, and that hunger was what had primarily drove Kain to seek out William. Crouching, he took the blood into his mouth and almost flinched by the sudden wash of sensation that poured across his worn and tired sense. He fed on the blood of one man and William fed on the wet flesh of the other, soft grunts, slow, damp rips and snapping of bone could be heard from the crouched titan in the corner.

For a moment, Kain and William seemed almost identical in monstrous, bloodthirsty nature. Perhaps this is why William, a scientist of his apparent reputation, had studied Kain as meticulously as he had said; William had apparently spent the best years of his life developing the virus he was now infected with, and it had made Kain realize that William took great pride in his monsters. He saw them like a perfected art, and to discover a naturally occurring biowepon – Kain – must have been an incredible discovery for him. The G-virus would build such extraordinarily powerful biowepons, and Kain might have been the base for William's next discovery… In this way, both monsters feeding at the same time, they seemed almost the same kind of creature… -

- William abruptly stopped his feeding from the now almost bare carcass, bits of tattered, weak red flesh hanging from empty ribs, and it rose to its feet in a motion too quick to be called strictly human. It wiped its mouth ravenously and stuffed in the remaining pieces of flesh dripping from its face, a face that Kain hadn't seen since the lab, since the red eyes that chilled even _his_ cold-hearted soul. Kain too, finished his feeding and wiped the blood dripping from his black lip with the back of his hand, raising up from his crouch to a defensive position: William didn't seem to even know Kain was watching him, and just stood, his back facing Kain in the distance, tilting its head back, looking up as if it was deciding something... -

- And it turned suddenly, its feet scuffing the brick as it span around and its eyes fixed on Kain. The inhuman redness drove into him like two bloodied daggers, and it snarled and bared its gore-stained teeth like a _damn_ mindless animal. The bulbous, orange, slime-dripping eyeball on its blistered and tortured right shoulder rolled around in its socket haphazardly and then focused dead on Kain, and strangely at that moment, William's rage exploded.

Throwing another of those horrific, tormented, fierce cries into the air as well as its disproportioned arms to emphasise the sheer power and abhorrence that stewed unrestrained inside it, the sickening monster threw itself down the corridor, hurtling towards its next victim with so much intense hate and rage that Kain wasn't even sure he would survive this encounter.

The running, screaming creatures' right fist again exploded into a mass of bloodied claws and from its mouth, dripping from a tongue wet with blood and distorted, gagged teeth stained with viscera and bits of entrails, foamed blood and saliva and hissing, putrid vomit that had turned sour in the dead mans guts. It foamed at the mouth like a mad dog and spat and hissed and growled a deep, throaty growl from the bottom of its disgusting heart.

Kain dived out of the insane beasts path and in that same second an explosion of brick and dust boomed out of the wall of his right as William's massively powerful bone claws made contact with the slimy green brick wall. Rolling off the floor and darting to his metal boots, he barely had enough time to dodge the rapid backhand swipe from the claws of the beast itself.

William ceased its attack only for a second to snarl at Kain, blood and dirtied saliva oozing from its gritted teeth, black rotting liquid dribbling across its blistered lips, and gore weeping from William's damaged right eye like a trickling, tainted teardrop. It ran down his tatty bone-white cheek, a skin that was once fresh and clean like a sterile laboratory, and it ran over the bumps in the flesh that were fatty tentacles of arteries, slowly growing over the monsters face to reach the damaged organ. William was healing himself of the bullet wounds that were secreting viscera all over his bloodied body, even now as he stood furiously oblivious of the scientific miracle he had become.

The battle commenced and Kain fended off a barrage of tremendously powerful blows delivered by the swinging arms of the violent beast. Numerous blows were executed every second and every second, Kain dodged, blocked and dived from them at a speed that would be impossible for any other man. William was by far the most physically powerful tyrant Kain had encounter that was still technically a human being. William may have been still a human, albeit a greatly enhanced version, but Kain felt his muscles start to ache from overwork but William however William didn't even appear to be stopping briefly between blows. William had turned from hyperventilating mad scientist to ultimate killing machine with the simple injection of a pathogen. Kain failed to see the pathogenic effect. William had unbelievable moves on him like a true fighter. If this was the effect of the G-virus, then Kain wanted to get his hands on it. The only real side effect Kain could see was the sheer lack of sentient thought, and one can't rule the world without a mind.

But it didn't seem like Kain would get much of a chance to investigate further. As much as Kain detested to the very core of his being to admit it, he was _losing_, and William was knocking him further and further back into the wall. William thirsted to smash Kain's skull into the brick and destroy him but not for the thirst of blood, and not for the name of his species, but simply because he _can_. William had no real reason to hate him, so why was he desperately trying to kill him? It didn't make any _sense_… -

-William's claws struck him across the chest with the force of an oncoming train and he was smacked across the sewer tunnel like a rag doll. Kain rolled across the brick that scratched up the exposed skin on his chest, the loose cloth strapped to his body dislodging from the intensity of the fight. On his fours, Kain coughed up bits of blood, and touching his chest, he realized William had broken a few of his ribs. The skin on his chest where William had struck him was red and purple and bruised, blood vessels rupturing beneath the unbroken skin, and looking startled and angrily at the beast at the end of the corridor, Kain saw almost a flash of pleasure across the deranged façade; intelligence he shouldn't possess.

William was still hunched over in the final movement of the blow, his clawed fist still stretched out almost in a tired delight with his human hand resting on his knee in support. Slowly, it approached Kain's crippled form, scuffling on the brick like a pathetic crippled insect, scuffling, trying to get to his feet in his weakness, and in the fear that was again beginning to leak through his stony heart like an eating acid.

Kain glanced painfully up and William was looking intently down at him with a smile, forced onto his messed up face incredibly to intimidate him. William grinned down at him and his cheek flinched and spasmed twice; some sort of muscle glitch brought on by the mutilation of the right side of his face, and with his one human hand, he clutched Kain by the throat and lifted him up off his feet to meet him eye to eye. Kain's face was only inches away from William's, and for the first time he could really smell the decay that was all over him. His eye smelt putrid and rotten, the throbbing arteries across his right cheek reeked strongly of rapidly decomposing blood, and his teeth were discoloured, jagged and broken from gnawing the bones of the enemies he devoured. It was at this point that Kain noticed the eye on his right shoulder had closed, and now, instead of shredding him apart like the deranged jackal he was literally seconds ago, he merely examined Kain intently. That growth on his right shoulder clearly had a great effect on his psyche. Maybe now he had changed back to the scientist he once was…

Kain slid his fingers up to his neck and gently tried to pry William's large hand from his neck without incurring the rage in the beast, but the strong fingers didn't loosen even slightly. William didn't stop studying him, and now his gaze wandered lower to the large angry bruise he had inflicted across Kain's pale chest. Eyes shining in curious twinkle, William pressed his clawed hand against his handiwork, causing Kain great discomfort. He hissed in pain and it brought some kind of sick pleasure to William's dead, soulless face to see Kain writhe in agony, wriggling in his grasp like a pathetic worm-

-And William howled in pain at the flash of agony that struck him across the face, throwing his toy aside and cradling his injury. Kain was not as defenceless as he had let him believe; He had struck the monster with his _own_ claws across the already damaged right side of William's face. William was now cradling his injury with both hands, wearing a look of shock and disappointment on his monstrous face like an innocent, scalded child. The monster was horrifically mangled with its ribs protruding from bloody, tattered flesh, and twice the size of any mortal man, but now it had whelped like a kicked puppy. When its bulbous eye was closed it had a sentient mind again… Kain found its behaviour erratic and disgusting; it had torn more that three men to pieces and had withstood rapid machine gun fire without even flinching in pain, but now, Kain marvelled as he began to understand that what he had done had _hurt_ its _feelings_…

Kain backed slowly away, unable to work out just _what_ was _with_ this creature… William persisted with the hurt, wounded innocent twinkle in his eye and Kain persisted backing away. What did it want from him? Why did it take what Kain had done so seriously? Why wasn't it the deranged slobbering beast it was a moment ago? With Kain in this weakened state, he couldn't figure out the events that had taken place in these past few moments. He wanted to kill William more than anything, but something was staying his hand…

William didn't stop his emotionally hurt façade as he exited the scene through one of the sewer gates, and Kain didn't stop puzzling over what had stayed his hand that evening as he left the sewer system.

When he came into this new world, this marvellous city that beneath it held a dark secret, he knew there and then that it wasn't going to last for long. What had happened in the bowels of the city, in the secret laboratory that had acted as his womb to this world, was too vast to be kept underground. Kain knew that the death and destruction that was being developed in the depths of the city would rise and transform the city to ashes like a dark phoenix of annihilation. And if that philosophy wasn't enough to convince him, Kain knew that everything the humans ever made destroyed them eventually, and Kain believed he had just witnessed the beginning of the end.


	2. Part2: The Fall of Raccoon City

Merely two days had passed since Kain's awakening and already he knew something was amiss. He knew from the very moment he emerged from the manhole in the city streets that it would not stop there, that the evil that William had created would slowly consume the entire city. At first he believed it was the humanity in him, poking through his weakened state and infecting him with the human mental illness of paranoia, but now that he was stronger, not fully restored but stronger, his steely vampiric mind was uncovering a few details.

Kain had been trying to concoct a plan to escape this world and return to Nosgoth and so decided that it would be wiser to maintain a low profile. Because of this, he had been feeding off of the blood of beggars and other homeless folk that no one cared for whether they lived or died, and had discovered something quite unusual. The blood of them had been unclean, tainted, and contaminated with a dark taste to it. Kain recognised its flavours as illness, but an illness like no other he had ever encountered. As he clutched the skin of their throats while taking their blood, their skin did not spring back. They were decaying under their skin. The skin of dead bodies doesn't have any elasticity to it, and thus their bodies were behaving like corpses. He even had a tough time trying to get some of the really far-gone beggars to bleed at all. It was like they were dead, only walking around like a living person. Kain had died once, a long time ago, and although he was still one of the living dead, he maintained many qualities alike to the living: Sentient thought, beating heart, breath, -

- "And a soul…" It seemed there was barely anything to separate the dead from the living and Kain had hated the prejudice living for so long that he was blinded by a prejudice of his own. No matter how he would run from it, the living dead and the living were too identical… "But not now…"

Something was happening _now_. Kain had been keeping an eye on the commerce in this world that he had awakened in. This city was called 'Raccoon City', and it had been experiencing some 'problems' recently. Cannibal murders in the woods, and a team of soldiers called the S.T.A.R.S sent in to investigate, but most of them died and the ones that survived told stories of undead monsters and a chemical leak. A _virus_ leak. It had taken Kain a lot of investigative work around the underworld of Raccoon to uncover _that_ little morsel of information. This city's best kept secret, it seems, is that allegedly the company responsible for the horrors in the woods provided over two thirds of the jobs for the inhabitants of this city. 'Umbrella' was the name of this medical company, and it ruled over this city like the Serafan vampire hunters ruled cruelly over Meridian, back in Nosgoth.

One of the most recurring stories Kain had heard tell was of walking corpses; _zombies, _that were the result of the virus leak in the woods. Kain visited the alleged spot where the S.T.A.R.S lost so many men, and all he found was a huge steaming pile of burnt wood and rubble. With all the evidence destroyed, Kain had little to link what had been going on in the woods, with what was starting to happen in the city, and what had happened with William, but he knew they were all connected by this company 'Umbrella'. All that was left as to find out how exactly…

The cannibal murders had started up again, and the wiser inhabitants of Raccoon City who believed the rumours of zombies and monsters had been trying to leave the city, but with no success. The Chief of police 'Brian Irons' had barricaded the cities exits, claiming he didn't want the 'Cannibal murderous' to skip town, but Kain knew he had put it up just as much to keep in the inhabitants as well as the 'cannibals'. Everything was set for a major disaster. The only thing needed was the spark of fear that would send things into the downward spiral of confusion and calamity that would end in the total destruction of their precious so called 'civilisation'. Kain awaited it with childish glee.

Right now, the humans were almost heralding the beginning of their damnation. Some sort of carnival was taking place, the blindingly bright, colourful lights and ear splittingly music making Kain feel increasingly nauseous. His fine and delicate vampiric senses weren't used to such torture. Human senses must have been so startlingly primitive if they could find _this_ sensory torture even remotely pleasurable. Kain rested his tired head against a stone pillar. While the masses of partying humans frolicked in the psychedelic light, Kain sheltered in the shade of a poorly lit parking lot merely meters from the action. The air was cold and it was drizzling slightly, and Kain sighed a cold cloudlike puff of condensation into the air. He was waiting for someone with fresher blood to stumble pass; the party going spirit in their blood would be a much-welcomed change to the rotten blood of the beggars and infected he had been feasting on so far. Kain had needs, and he couldn't stand decaying blood any longer.

The party atmosphere and large amounts of alcohol they had been no doubt indulging in would lead the law enforcement officers to believe that maybe the victim had fallen on a broken bottle or had had a bad trip. Kain did enjoy making his victims suffer a little before he killed them, but there was no sense in giving away your prescience with inefficient butchery; he wasn't a fledgling vampire anymore. He hoped that his luck so far would hold out and a tasty morsel would fall into his lap, like a young woman or a pure virgin – creatures whom had particularly exquisite blood, but the only flies that had fallen into his web so far were beggars asking him for a 'dime', - what he assumed to be the currency in this world. He was hunting out in the open like this because he'd had enough of the smelly bastards. When they asked him for a 'buck' or a 'dime' he didn't even dignify them with the acknowledgement of their existence, and if they spat an insult under their breath as they parted penniless from his company, then God help them… He'd finished off more than a few of those stinky old farts that way…

The music stopped briefly at one point for a speech from the piggish Chief of police. Kain remembered how he instantly decided he hated the man the moment he marched onto the platform with all those microphones pointed at him, telling the mindless people how safe they were in their 'pen'. This 'Brian Irons' man reminded him of the vampire Vorador; a perverted, decadent old fool, and both Vorador and this mortal reeked of the same perverted sadism. Granted, Vorador had certainly cleaned up his act these past few decades, but old habits die hard .. .

Kain remembered the signet right Vorador had given him, and he remembered how he was wearing it now, and he smiled to himself slightly; Vorador was one of his own kind, not this slimy mortal man on that stage up there. Even Vorador deserved more respect than that. –

- A human creature raced from the mass of party going crowds and ran heavily into Kain. He instantly smelt the blood of the mortal washing over him in its panic. He smelt the pheromones in its blood and felt his spirits lift; it was a female, a young female in a panic. She had fallen into his web and he felt the tingle of excitement race through him, _stimulating_ his sleeping soul, bringing him out of his deep thought and back to life like a deranged animal. He clutched her shoulders hard, preventing her from getting away and stopping her from struggling, and how she struggled… -

-But then something clicked in his mind and he suddenly realized there was something very wrong with this woman.

"Let me go – let me **_go_**!" His eyes suddenly broke free from the cloud of bloodlust and he became suddenly aware of the human female he had clutched in his hands. They focused on her, and they saw her upset fear, saw her kick and struggle ferociously. Saw that she was only a child of about 12 years old.

He was holding a pretty little blonde girl harshly in his grasp and he stared in wonderment at her; He couldn't remember the last time he'd seem a real human child, except maybe on posters. Back in Nosgoth, the humans never let their children out on the streets. They feared what both the Serafan and the vampires would do to them if they were caught. The closest Kain had ever been to a human child was hearing the bleat of a newborn baby from the upstairs window of a tavern back in the city of Meridian. He remembered staring up at the window in bewilderment for so long … He couldn't remember why, he didn't know why even then, yet he watched that window for the best part of the night, right up until morning…

"Just let me go or I'll call the cops! I'm not a kid – I'm not stupid! My parents say I'm very competent and responsible for my age"-

-" But you still got caught, didn't you, little girl?" Kain said, his voice crooning low and soft, so soft, part of his dark soul screamed out for violence, for bloodshed, for him to end this tiny life and end it painfully.

But he didn't

She glanced back at him only for a split second, her eyes meeting his briefly, and she was obviously startled by what she saw. Kain's skin was as pale as the purest marble and his eyes were a golden yellow – and it didn't look synthetic like the strange fashions he had seen. He terrified the little girl, and it made him smile. Her eyes were pail blue, a deep endless blue like the ocean, like

"_Like William's"_ Kain thought. The girl looked so much like him now that he noticed; only she was blonde, and-

- And it was a coincidence.

"Why are you scared of me, little girl?" He asked gently.

"Because you're a freak who **_won't let me go_**!" And she kicked him hard in the groin, as hard as she could he sensed, but it didn't hurt him even slightly. This scared her even more and she upped the desperation in the distressed struggling. "I gotta go! I gotta go!" She whined, her fair voice breaking down into squeaks, like a small trapped, defenceless animal.

"Go where?" Kain asked, attempting to take advantage of her desperation to find out… to find out that which he didn't know.

"To the R.P.D!"

"The what?"

"The Raccoon Police Department! My mother called and said it was too dangerous to stay at home!"

Kain let her go and she catapulted off into the crowd like a tensed spring.

"It would seem that your mother speaks the truth…" he said to himself quietly as he watched the child disappear into the crowd like smoke into thin air…-

-And then another human ran into him, this time, a young woman of about 20. She was rambling her apologies like an idiot, giggling and correcting herself… she was obviously under the influence of alcohol. Back in Nosgoth he wouldn't lay a finger on a filthy drunk, but he sensed her blood wasn't infected, and that was as good as it got in this town.

She was too busy jabbering like an idiot to realize the danger she was now in. Kain clutched the back of the woman's head by her dark hair firmly in his grasp and covered her mouth tightly with his other hand, then before she even had the chance to realize she was going to die, he twisted her head, the familiar snap of bone greeting his pointed ears. She fell limp in his arms, now nothing more than just a sack of blood, nothing more than she had ever been to him. Kain took her blood right there and then, confident than the lively commotion merely meters from where he stood wouldn't notice, so immersed in all their uproar were they. -

- And someone screamed. Kain dropped his victim to the floor in haste, believing at first the screams were directed at his nauseating deed, but he shrieks had arisen from some place towards the west side of the masses of crowds; he had not caused the fear and disorder that was beginning to break lose like a rash all across the west wing of the carnival. Suddenly the sense of fear, desperation and terror spread throughout the masses as if someone had taken a match to a flammable parchment. The crowd whisked around each other in a haphazard confusion as _something_ within them was causing great anguish and terror.

"Oh God – what are they!" He heard yelled from the swarming mob, and it lead Kain to believe that his suspicions were coming true. Those beggars he had been feasting on while he was still particularly weak had very bad blood, almost like the blood of a long dead corps, and now those long dead corpses were walking around, and from what Kain could see, they were walking around and trying to feed on people. The zombies that had been lingering in the woods had now begun their conquest of the city. If they were sentient beings, Kain might have even considered an alliance with them, but they were mindless animals, stalking blindly with their cataract eyes, mouths gaped open in a hungry yawn and limp, rotting, holey skin loosely hanging off their bones.

Kain backed further away into the parking lot and watched the turmoil coolly, calculating a way out of this situation –

- And something grabbed at his leg.

"No!" The very victim he had drained of blood literally moments ago was now clawing hungrily at his leg, puling his boot closer to its salivating, tatty lips. A hungry mew rose up from its mouldy, dead mouth, but before it had a chance to plant a single bite on Kain's metal boots, its skull was smashed under his foot, bits of brain and dark, thick liquids blossoming out in an blast of red and sinewy bone. The creature flopped back down into its final resting place, and now, looking back up suddenly, Kain saw an additional three more lurching towards him from the city streets.

The zombies were making light work of the crowd, mowing them down as though they were nothing, and by this time, armed police officers from the R.P.D had arrived in large blue trucks. The back doors of the vehicles burst open and swarms of machine gun packing cops in body armour swarmed out and assumed defensive positions behind a haphazard barricaded of police cars.

To be honest, as Kain took up a position behind the barricade alongside a small batch of civilians the cops had rescued, he was quite impressed with the order the cops demonstrated in a crisis situation. Back in Nosgoth, when Kain took out the Serafan lord, the entire Serafan order crumbled pathetically, mindless fools that they are, but here were these humans organising an effective attack force with the lack of any real orders.

"Dear God – What's going on?" One of the civilians bleated pathetically to Kain with their hands over his head, hunched up like a whipped dog.

"I can honestly say I do not have a clue." Kain responded calmly. His nerve in this situation was intensifying the frightened look in the small huddle of terrified civilians; a young woman and two men.

Kain peered over the police cars to get a better look of the situation. His eyes widened as he realized the sudden severity of the situation; nothing but zombies as far as the eye could see. There was the occasional squealing citizen, tripping over backwards and being engulfed in ravenous zombies, but other than that, everything was behind this barricade of cop cars and S.W.A.T vehicles; men women and children all finding shelter from the nightmare.

The cops fired and fired and fired and the sound at the front line was thunderous. Hundreds of officers, all armed with machine guns or shotguns or even pistols were firing with everything they had –

- And it wasn't even _slowing them down_. Those monsters weren't even _feeling_ their gunfire and the zombie front was now only about fifty feet away from their barricade. The humans were now growing desperate, and even civilians were now running up to the front line and firing their pistols on the creatures with handguns they thought they'd never have to use in self-defence. Some children were even picking up and throwing empty bottles at them, bottles that were emptied only moments ago at the party that had to have such a disgusting end.

Kain rose to his feet. He had no doubts in his mind as to the fate he would receive if he waited here any longer. –

- "Hey!"

Kain inwardly winced. A young officer with spiky dark blue hair and black-framed glasses darted up to Kain. The boy wiped his damp fringe out of his face; a fringe damp with the terror-sweat that was running in large salty beads down is face. The boy was wielding a handgun and despite his 'fresh-out-of-academy' appearance, he seemed to be quite able to handle himself.

"Hey pal!" He called out again in his irritating voice, slapping a hand firmly on Kain's shoulder. "You can't go anywhere out there! Those monsters are all over the place! You're better off here, sir." –

- Kain batted the boys' hand violently from his shoulder. "Don't presume you can order me around, _boy_." And with that he left the barricade behind, walking astonishingly leisurely down one of the many side – alleys that networked through the city.

The boy cop stood in flabbergast amazement for a few moments, then; "Hey, asshole! I'm talking to you!" He darted after Kain.

Meanwhile, Kain thought he had lost the upheaval back at the barricade but he was very much mistaken. As he made his way down the tight corridors and back alleys or Raccoon City, he saw at least three people lose their lives off in the distance, such as at the end of the corridor, or hear the desperate screams for help just around the next corner and be greeted only with a pack of zombie tearing red flesh out of a freshly killed carcass. Kain didn't fancy himself much as a scavenging jackal and if the zombie made a kill, he wouldn't dispatch them in order to take their meal from them. The whole procedure reeked of cowardice, and he only fed from the corpse William had left him because he was starving.

Kain found more than a few fresh corpses of cops in those back alleys, and he searched their bodies for ammunition as he went. He also fed on the ones that weren't too far gone, for he sensed that he might not be able to get another chance to feed on fresh blood for quite some time after this. He managed to scrape together quite a surprising amount of ammunition this way; enough to get him to a safe house of some sort. He only hoped the gun would do more to protect his life than it had done for its previous owner, William.

The words of the small blonde child rang through his mind;_ "The Raccoon Police Department! My mother called and said it was too dangerous to stay at home!" _Was _this_ a safe haven? Kain didn't suppose it would be a completely foolproof plan; the limp bodies of dead men and women in R.P.D uniform could attest to that, but it would be better than waiting out in the open to die. He imagined wasting his last moments running dangerously low on ammunition and dodging zombies aimlessly with no purpose in it.

"God dammit - I said wait the hell up!" And Kain winced again as he realized that the annoying young cop had chased him all through the system of alleyways. Kain pretended he didn't hear him and soldiered on, but it was hard to pretend you hadn't noticed someone when he would run up in front of you and wave their arms in your face like they were drowning or something.

"_Why_ did you follow me?" Kain barked suddenly, taking the young human by a shocked surprise.

"Why!" He asked in an almost shriek. "Cus I'm a cop, that's why! It's my job to protect civilians in a situation like this and right now it looks like you're the only guy around here still alive worth protecting!"

"I don't want your help."

" No but you're gonna need it!"

"I _have_ a weapon!" Kain barked, now finding this more than a little irritating and was really starting to lose his temper with the ill-mannered human. "I need _nothing_ from you!"

"Do you have this though?" And he raised his handgun.

"_Yes_, I _do_ have a gun." And Kain raised _his_ handgun.

"No! That's only an 'VP70'! It fires 9mm parabellum. Now _MY_ gun is a Desert Eagle; top of the line. You can drop an elephant with a few shots from this."

"A well placed bullet from my gun can do just the same." And Kain continued defiantly on his way. Or at least he tried to.

"Hey, you moron! What make you think _you_ can plant a bullet firmly in the temple of a zombie! You saw all those officers back at the barricade and they're all probably…"

-The boy realized what he was about to say and he stopped, hanging his head and his eyes filling with a pathetic kind of sorrow. -

-"You were going to say that they're probably all dead by now, aren't you?" Kain said, helping him finish.

"We should probably go back and check it out." He said hurriedly. "Search for survivors and" – Kain was already starting to leave. – "HEY! Get your ass back here coward!" –

- Kain froze.

"I am no _coward_." He spat, turning viciously back to the boy that had insulted him so, his white hair flicking round him. He was clearly unnerved the young cop, but he persisted –

- "Oh, so it looks like I struck a nerve with that one, huh?" He nodded to himself, coercing himself into a very dangerous situation. " You know you dress like a real hard man, but your really just a big pussy, like all the other guys who dress like you, I mean, what _real_ man wears black lipstick and nail varnish?" Kain's eyes were wide and burned at the insolent idiot. What the ridiculous adolescent didn't know was that they were their natural colour, at least for a vampire, and Kain took great pride in his vampiric nature more than anything else. Yet the boy continued. " And you wear your hair long like a girl! How can anyone take you seriously looking like that? You expect to get a _job_ this way?" He stopped right there and then because his discourteous remarks had proved effective enough for Kain to be marching right towards him with that 'I'm-gonna-kill-you' look in his yellow eyes. The young cop backed off as fast as he could but Kain kept coming. He started to wish that maybe he should have gone about leading this white haired freak back to the barricade in a fashion that _wouldn't_ result in him getting his ass kicked.

Too late for second thoughts now. Kain had quickened his pace and was marching down the tight and inescapable corridor towards the young cop like a steamroller; anything in his way was batted aside like it was nothing; trash cans, heavy metal doors… The cop even climbed over a stack of a dozen bicycles chained to the walls annoyingly blocking the corridor completely and Kain just tore them out of his way like they were made of paper. The chains splintered off the brick as they were ripped out of their holster in the red brick wall.

"Hey, calm down man." The cop tried, raising up his hands in apology but not being so unwisely trusting to stop backing away. Kain didn't batter an eyelid at his feeble attempt at and apology; it was more like an attempt at a stalemate than anything else, and Kain never went for the stalemate when total vengeance was to be had. "Dude, those B.M.X's you just ripped off the wall don't come cheap you know!" But inside he was staring to wonder whether he was entirely human… If zombies were running around out there, then what the hell was running around right in front of him? No matter how strong a man he was, no human being could rip a bunch of bikes from the wall with a single whip of the back of his hand, especially a tall and thin man like Kain.

The cop tripped and stumbled back out into the street, narrowly avoiding the lunging zombies that greeted him at the mouth of the alleyway. Kain suddenly became aware that the young officer had lead him back to the barricade out of fear for his safety, however, there was no roar of gunfire, no loud explosions, no screams…

The young officer was hovering between the exit of the alleyway and the streets with a shocked expression on his now dirtied face.

"Yo, you gotta check this out…"

Kain allowed himself to forget his rage for the time being. He took notice of young officer fire a round from his Desert Eagle into the exploding skulls of the mewing, hungry creatures. His weapon was impressively powerful…-

- And as Kain exited the alleyway, into the street he had fled from merely moments ago, he was walking in onto a scene of apocalypse. Corpses of freshly dead cops were strewn across their barricading vehicles they had given their lives to protect. Blood leaked slowly out from piles of corpses, the last remnants of a courageous last stand. Kain pictured their end; back to back in a circle, firing on the wave after wave of zombies closing in on them so agonisingly slowly…

The young officer trod the derelict grounds of the last bastion of human resistance with a strangled, disgusted look of sheer devastation on his face. Running his fingers roughly though his tangled hair, he looked as though he even might cry at the sickening sight of carnage and blood, vomit and viscera… Kain on the other hand didn't even batter an eyelid. His vampiric nature had a noticeable effect on his perception of carnage. That which would have disgusted him in life, only served to inflame his hunger in death. He didn't have any idea of the true suffering around him, and if he did, then he just simply didn't care.

Kain rolled over the corps of a boy in his late-teens that was limp and bloodied on the asphalt with a kick of his hard metal boot. Once rolled over, Kain emotionlessly prised the double-barrelled shotgun from the dead boys clutched fingers. They were still warm, but there was no way he could be alive; most of his face was missing, leaving only a ragged blackish-red hole with unrecognisable bits of bone protruding from it. That was the only wound on his otherwise unblemished body. –

-And suddenly the thought occurred to him that he was much too unblemished to have been killed by zombies. Zombies would ravage the bodies they fed on, tearing cloth and bone, going for the soft, succulent, tender parts of the flesh first, likes the stomach or the throat. The face was a very had and bony piece of meat in compared to these parts and Kain doubted they would go for the face straight away. Maybe if they were hungry and trying to get to the rich and fatty texture of the brain, but certainly not when there were so many corpses strewn across the road filled with soft, luscious delights. Kain had been well fed prior to the takeover of the barricade, but thinking of it almost made Kain want to feed himself. –

- But enough of that. It seemed most likely that there were much more than just zombies loose on these streets and it wouldn't be much safer for long; the city had been overwhelmed by the zombies numbers before, Kain didn't wish to see how well it would fare when the thousands of slaughtered citizens would join the ranks of the undead…

"God you sick…." Murmured the young cop involuntarily on seeing Kain rip the weapon from the grasp of the mangled boy. Kain was pleased to see the sick revulsion on his face, hand clasped over his mouth, cringing desperately to keep himself from vomiting. The weapon Kain was now holding wore the blood of its former owner over it and this seemed to further disturb the young officer. "How can you touch that?"

"I don't think I quite understand you…" Replied Kain, unaware that it was infact his heartless conduct and not the actual carnage that was disturbing the young officer so.

"Hello!" Said the officer unnecessarily melodramatically. "It's covered in a dead dudes blood!"

Kain simply just looked down at the firearm with humanly unbearable blankness, then wiped the blood from its barrel with his red shawl-like clothing, rudely and with a lack of feeling that had all the hallmarks of a sociopath.

"Is that better?" Kain grumbled, finding this interaction tedious.

"_NO_!" He squealed, suffering from a minor freak out, though Kain sensed that much of this had been put on… "How can you go around just rolling over dead bodies and shit?" The young cop protested, massaging his temples, which was a slight thing he could do to ease the situation; the surroundings gave the impression that a bloody apocalypse had recently been and gone. Things were on fire far off in the distance, and the great plumes of tainted smoke bathed the sky a foggy blood red. The wind carried the faint ghostly screams from all over the city, and also the smell; the stench of rotting, shitty corpses that Kain had noticed starting to crop up as early on as –

-" _…As a couple of hours after I had arisen from the sewers; after the scientist had given his life to protect his bio-weapons…"_

Kain discovered that Umbrella worked with disease and medicine, and Raccoon City had certainly come down with a bad case of _something_… So maybe _William_ had caused this current leak that had taken over the city…

"…_And William wouldn't have caused the leak if he didn't come back for me…."_ However Kain didn't feel bad about being partially responsible for this massacre; after all, they were only human. It wasn't like they were irreplaceable. Those damn things could propagate like rabbits under the right circumstances, which was just about _every_ circumstance... Human reproduction reminded him of bacteria; spreading uncontrolled across the face of the Earth… and with no natural predators in this world to keep their numbers down, you could barely breathe without coming into contact with another parasitic human cattle. A good disaster like this was the only thing that could keep their numbers down.

"Hey, are you still listening?" Squealed the young cop, snapping Kain out of his deep thought and leaving his nerves rather ruffled and frayed.

"No, I'm not. I don't really want to talk to you at all, but I feel that to have your knowledge and experience in firearms on my side then it would be beneficial to me."

"God, you're weird… All you seem to care about it yourself. Even Chief Irons would give a shit about bloodshed even slightly!"

That chief Irons of his was indeed a callas being, but he was still human, and so suffered from the same physical and metal frailties that all mortals do.

"I work with bloodshed." He told him, trying to let on as little and as much as possible. "My trade is death. Broken bodies mean nothing to me."

"…. Are you… an assassin?" He asked sheepishly, trying to piece together the riddles Kain had given him, like scraps to a dog hungry for the taste of information, for some kind of rational sense to what he was seeing, to what was _happening_ to him.

"I work for no man. I am my own killer."

"…?" He didn't know how to react to that disgustingly frank response; he didn't want to believe that Kain was any kind of law-breaker. He needed Kain to stay alive; safety was in numbers, but being the kind of person he was to enlist himself into the police force, Kain didn't think the young and wholehearted officer could morally stand helping a real murderer to survive.

"It would be unwise to remain in the open as we are now." Kain explained. "The creatures that did this could decide to come back."

"Hey, who died and made you leader? I'm the only officer left alive around here so you should be doing things my way!"

"Then what do you suggest?" Kain asked, checking to see whether the shotgun was loaded in a manner that spoke his boredom.

"… Uh, we should go to the R.P.D." Said the young officer, suggesting exactly what Kain had told him moments ago, making himself appear foolish. "There's probably some sort of crisis centre set up there with medics and S.W.A.T and stuff."

"Unless of course it has been overrun too, just like this barricade."-

-"No!" He hollered suddenly. "That's not a possibility! It's impossible! It can't happen!"

"Face it boy. Everyone is dead. We need to leave now or suffer the same fate."

"NO. We're going to the R.P.D first, no more questions."

Kain didn't really feel in the mood to argue. If the human wanted to take them to the R.P.D then Kain had no reason to object. There was no way he could see to get back to Nosgoth, so why should going to the R.P.D be any more different to him than going anywhere else in this plagued world? No matter where he goes he'll be surrounded by vermin. This way at least he'll be spending his time doing something more productively instead of _wasting_ his time hiding in the shadows as he expected to do until he found a way back to Nosgoth.

The boy was trying the radio inside one of the patrol cars with no reply, of course. He kept trying however, half hanging out from the vehicle, leaning over yet another oddly mutilated corps that was slouched in the drivers seat.

The zombies should have dragged the man out of his car onto the floor where they could dog pile his struggling body and rip into the soft flesh, overpowering him. However, the body's face had again been smashed through, like a pole had been thrust into his face with enormous power. Only very few of the corpses that littered this area were missing their soft flesh, indicating zombie attack. Most of them had had their faces decimated and had been tossed into a pile, like something did this systematically, indicating some sort of sick intelligence…

"We need to find cover." Kain told the officer, showing an unusual amount of concern by letting him know what he was thinking. "The zombies have neither the strength nor the intelligence to kill these humans the way they have been killed."

"'These humans'?" He repeated, standing up and turning to face Kain with a sickened expression on his face. "God, you speak like… like you're some kind of monster…"

Kain resisted the tantalising urge to answer his statement.

"And what makes you think I care whether the zombies did this or not? These people are dead! That's all the should matter!"

"I'm sure we could handle a zombie or two." Kain said, almost bragging. "But an encounter with something strong and calculated enough to systematically destroy every single one of these officers faces and survive… well, I'm not sure that with our current experience, we'd do well…"

"What makes you think these guys didn't nail it?"

"Do you see whatever did this around here?" Kain motioned out to the vastness, paved with blood and viscera. "Meaning that it must have left in search of further victims, and when it can't find any because of the zombie attack, it's going to come back here."

"Where the meat is…"

"Precisely…"

The young officer was finally beginning to sober up from being drunk with shock and sorrow. He ran his fingers through his hair one last time before attempting to take charge of the situation, trying to apply his training even now…

"Okay then!" He said in an energetic huff. "I'll find a patrol car and we'll be on our way!"

"To the RP.D?"

"Well where'd you think we'll be going?" He asked sarcastically, inspecting the patrol car-barricade for a car that wasn't too unpleasant inside.

"Well if the car has enough fuel then why not be done the city completely?" Kain asked, his voice rough with an edge of irritation.

"There could be people hiding out in there…" He explained, his voice becoming soft, but not ceasing to anxiously examine each and every patrol car. "People that took refuge, and we have to pick them up and get them outta hell."

"Why should we bother?"

The young officer got up again from rooting around in the patrol car and stared at him in disbelief.

"Well what would you think if you were stuck in the R.P.D and you were going to die because some white haired weirdo is to much of a chicken shit to bother?"

"How _dare_ you call me a coward!" Kain barked. Anyone else would have shut up there and then, but the young officer was so intent on the possible rescue of innocent civilians that he continued to provoke him.

"Because it's true isn't it? You're so intent on saving your own ass that you forget there are other people out there suffering more than you! You are _sick_!" He hollered, pointing a finger violently at him. "You've been nothing but evil and cold hearted, but you're just hiding behind that because you're too much of a wimp to do anything that takes real guts!"

Kain trudged closer to the young man, the same way he had done to William to exact his power and dominance over the boy. –

-But it didn't work. -

"Hey! Don't even give me that shit again, asshole!" He barked commandingly, surprisingly to Kain, snatching at his gun and aiming it at him with both hands. "I'm sick of all your bullshit! Now I know you're a freak with the strength of the hulk but you're gonna have to fucking play nice for all this! We've got enough things trying to kill us so we don't need to be looking over our shoulders at each other all the time too!"

There was a long silent pause, in which you could hear again the screams and pleas of help echoing eerily through the icy air, then-

"Very well, _boy_. But be warned; if you dare to dream you can intimidate me, then you are sorely"-

-**_Wrraaaghw!-_**

A monstrous roar filled the night air, shattering the eerie atmosphere and the ambience exploded into a state of petrified panic, as if it had just been splattered with blood.

Kain could instantaneously distinguish the source of the mangled bellow, such were his finely tuned vampiric sense, but the human officers head darted from side to side, the reverberating echoes dancing around the cityscape clearly confusing his laughably limited human sense of hearing.

"Over there!" And Kain pointed out the source.

It rounded an empty blue R.P.D S.W.A.T team van with heavy, pounding steps, yet though each was slow and thunderous, it covered just as much ground in one stride as a human would in three. It was well over the size of a normal human, quite possibly over eight feet tall.

It was bald; its skin rough and disgustingly tainted all over and its teeth were exposed in a lipless grin. One of its eyes was stitched over across its smarmy grinning face, and the one that was exposed burned at you with hatred more powerful than the fury of a million suns. It was wearing a black leather trench coat and huge boots, and each of its titanic fists was as large as a human head, and as it caught sigh of Kain and of the young cop with its one piercing, viscous eye, it boomed in an aggressive and hideously inhuman voice-

"**_S.T.A.R.S_**"

"_The 'Special Tactics And Rescue Squad'_." Thought Kain. "_The one group of people still alive that could still pose a threat to 'Umbrella'… And I assume this is here to eliminate them…"_ Well it seemed to be eliminating everyone _but_ its primary targets… maybe it was still in the process of intercepting the surviving S.T.A.R.S members…

Now was not the time for petty speculation. The monster paused very briefly, maybe to decide which one of them it should go for next; the stony faced vampire that was displaying no fear, yet was armed with the inferior weapon, or the young and weak cop who was clearly afraid yet possessed the most powerful weapon.

The creature didn't seem to care which was the strongest, and instead lurched towards the one that was closest to it; Kain.

Kain unloaded a round from the shotgun he claimed off the corps of the young man, the round exploding onto the chest of the beast in a spray of debris and purple blood but wasn't enough to make the monster even flinch. It was nowhere near enough. The creature marched ever onward, its one spiteful eye fixed maliciously on its target. Kain didn't back down. He didn't even back away, and as it closed in on him, from the palm of its left sprang a disgusting fatty purple tentacle, the same thickness as the gory holes in the faces of so many of the bodies that littered this barricade.

Kain aimed the powerful weapon at the face of the closing in monster, determined to make this one shot count, and pulled the trigger, the shotgun shell exploding on contact, but it didn't seem to effect it. –

- An explosion sounded and the monster recoiled, snarling a deep mildly distracted growl from the force of the blast. It wasn't until Kain looked back at the young police officer that he realized the powerful series of explosions was coming from the weapon he held in his hands; the handgun he had called 'Desert Eagle'. The boy held it firmly at arms length, and with good reason; the recoil caused by the sheer power of the blasts was so strong that with each shot, it bucked from his hands so ferociously that it was flung over his head, stopped only by his hands, clinging feebly to the weapon.

The gigantic, ferocious, yet by no means mindless beast turned its attention from Kain to the boy it perceived to be more of a threat to it, then suddenly, without any warning, it threw its black leather clad arms into the air and it _roared _a violent and mangled roar. The boy was terrified, eyes wide with fear, but impressively he didn't let his fear control him. He didn't freeze on the spot quivering in fear like so many Kain had seen in his time; he didn't even stick to his corner childishly like the suicidal Sarafan vampire hunters of Nosgoth. The monster dashed at him at incredible speed and as it swan, the boy ducked and dived across its opposite side, completely dodging the attack-

- However not as completely as Kain originally thought…

The young cop rolled across the floor and back into a standing position, but he was hunched over, clutching his arm in pain as blood blossomed from the freshly cut wound. The pain registered in his face only for a second before he ignored it, snatching at his firearm with his good arm and spinning around to face the monster. A series of explosions sounded, but the shots were greatly compromised by the fact that he had to hold the Desert Eagle in one hand. It almost bucked completely from his grasp with each thunderous shot, yet for all his injury, which was now bleeding so freely it leaked onto the floor in a dark and inky puddle… The scent was so strong, like an intoxicating, rich perfume… Kain's eyes fluttered shut in ecstasy of the smell…-

- But they darted open again at the scratchy sound of the boys scream. He opened his golden eyes just in time to see the monster swing its tree-trunk of an arm and bring it across the boys chest, fly swatting him at least fifteen feet, the unmistakable sound of the snapping of bones alerting Kain's senses that the monster had broken a rib or two… When his body struck the floor, he rolled a further ten feet before slamming into a blue S.W.A.T vehicle, coming to a painful stop. Blood was creeping out of the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away weakly, reaching for his weapon

-But it wasn't there-

His eyes widened when he caught sight of his weapon, just next to the boots of the huge beast that had injured him so severely… it stepped over the gun as it closed in on him in response, all he could do was try to escape, try to run, but with his incredible injury he couldn't even get to his feet…

Kain watched this curiously, silently debating with himself whether he should help the crippled boy or not, but in the end, he realized he was watching was could very well become his end… he shook his head, denying that this could become his own fate, but decided that the only way he could prove this to himself beyond doubt that he could survive was by 'helping' that boy… If he couldn't even protect the life of that young officer, then what hope did he have for surviving himself?

Feeling a part of him wince with a mild twinge of regret, Kain forced himself into a run. Barrelling into the side of the humongous trench coated monster, Kain drove his shoulder into the beast with all his might. The monster was slammed off its disastrous course and was catapulted off, crashing thunderously into a squad card. A slight tinkle of metal was the last sound from the now totalled car. The thing wasn't moving, but Kain didn't assume it would stay that way for long... He turned his attention to the boy, who had given up looking distressed and astonished by Kain's inhuman strength and instead nestled his wounded arm in the other, rocking it gently as though the tender movement would make any real difference. He was dumbstruck. That was the only way to describe it. His eyes were wide and his pupils thoroughly dilated, glazed over with a kind of purest terror, like the boy had seen a vision of his own death. Maybe he had…

"Get up." Kain commanded down to the crippled boy, still leaning against the blue S.W.A.T van, not bothering to soften the tone of his voice. Social graces would have to wait when that monster could get back up at any minuet.

"No…" he replied softly slowly shaking his head. Kain frowned in a confused disgust before trying again.

"Get up, _now_." And this time his words were punctuated by a rough tug at his good arm. "You'll die if you stay here any longer."

The boys' eyes suddenly fixated on Kain's with a dream like quality about them, like he had just been unwillingly enlightened with a grave knowledge of the truth, something that even Kain hadn't realised yet.

"…There's no point…" The resignation in his voice was a painful contrast to his 'never-say-die' attitude he wore seconds ago, before his oozing injury had been inflicted…

"This is _not_ a debate." Kain growled and tugged at him harder, causing him to jostle his fresh wound and re-opened the freshly made clots. It must have been painful, secretly to Kain's glee, but the pain didn't register on the young cops… disturbingly stunned face. Something about that last encounter had shaken him deeply, but Kain care what it was; the boys' deadweight was slowing him down, trying to drag the half-limp _thing_ along, Kain really was beginning to wonder why he was bothering. The boy was acting like he was barely human, just a mass of human existence… and his delirious shock was really winding Kain up.

"Stand!" He snapped, shaking him violently like a child misbehaving himself. "Now is _not_ the appropriate time to allow your emotions to cloud your judgement!" Kain was losing his patience with him… He'd managed to drag him a fair distance from the barricade, down an alleyway and around a bend into the filthy bowls of the city but just couldn't bear to haul the stupid idiot any further. His patience was wearing increasingly thing with every step and now his rage was dangerously exposed. He was ready to explode. The slightest upset would set him off, and one would not want to be in the firing path when Kain lost control to his rage…

Tossing the dumbfounded boy onto a pile of stinking trash in black plastic bags, he glared crossly down at him with his sharp golden eyes and shouted,

"Do you so enjoy pain?" He paused briefly, not looking for an answer, but letting his words sink in on that boy's thick skull. "You think that wound is the end? If you do not press on you will receive more of them, and I can promise you of that. I will see to it _myself_." _That_ was a threat of violence if ever he did hear one… The young officer realised he might as well tell him. The more he kept his fears to himself, the more enraged and frustrated with him Kain got. He knew he was just as much in danger from Kain as he was any other monster running around in this city… but it wouldn't matter for much longer.

"I'm going to die…" The young officer said suddenly and frankly, abruptly capturing Kain's golden gaze with his own, frightened eyes.

Kain snorted and rolled his eyes agitated that _this_ was the petty excuse for the boys' disruptive behaviour. Unfolding him arms, he made to snatch at the boy and haul him up again, but he slapped his hand away.

"You just don't get it, do you? You heard what it said! S.T.A.R.S it said! Oh God… Oh God I hoped it was a coincidence…."

"Are you going to let me in on this?" Kain said sarcastically.

"I... I'm friends with one of the S.T.A.R.S. He told me everything he knew about … about Umbrella and the zombies… I just listened, you know? But now that thing is coming after the S.T.A.R.S, and it wants to get rid of me first!"

"…So you know about all this…" Kain pondered. "But you can still escape the beast instead of excepting its wrath like a coward."

"No, no you see, _you_ can 'escape its wrath'," He told him, his fevered concern forcing him to speak through the incredible pain of his injury. ", But it wont stop, wont _rest_, until it gets me…" He shook his head rapidly from side to side, as if he was refusing to acknowledge deaths' calling to him, sweat of terror running down his pale forehead and being flicked about him.

"So," Kain said softly, taking in his words. "You plan to let it kill you…"-

- "How long do you think I'll be able to survive here with his wound?" He pointed at his shredded, bloodied gash the creature had given him. Apparently, the tentacle that had emerged from one of its hands had scissored through the cloth of his uniform and flesh alike, grazing the bone cruelly. The boy felt the impending certainty of death sit uncomfortably in his gut and was thrown into the same sense of panic that William had been in shortly before his demise. The officers training was showing, he was taking it all very well considering he knew he was going to die. But his panic only showed in his face, in the sweat of his brow, in his shallow, rapid breaths… and in the defeated look he gave Kain when he offered to help him back up.

"There's no point." He said, so normally that it unnerved Kain somewhat… "It'll just keep chasing me. And you."

Kain shook his head, frowning in flabbergasted disbelief. "Unbelievable…" Once again, Kain was disturbed by the unsettling unpredictability of this world. It disgusted him; it left him feeling emotionally suffocated, appalled and speechless. The resignation of fate in the boys' eyes was painful. Kain shook his head gently to himself. The boy had a firm grasp of reality before that monster got to him… his feet firmly on the ground with all this, and not making wild accusations about the origins of these creatures like everybody else and just focused on survival. Now, he'd transformed into a being absorbed in melancholic self-pity, head hung and emanating a painful woe making him almost unbearable watch. Kain presumed the boy was all out of ideas to extend his lifespan, but that was no excuse for how he was behaving.

"Then we'll kill it." Kain said suddenly. "You don't have to die because it is the will of a mindless beast. If it gets the better of you then you're no more deserve the status of a sentient than it." Though Kain truly believed in what he was saying and believed there was no way the boy could argue, he could just tell the boy had other ideas. It was like all the fight in his body had been knocked out of him with that narrowly avoided blow. If it had hit him directly then he probably would even be dead…

The penny dropped and Kain realized that the boy was already dead, emotionally that was, and with no will to fight, then the boy was no more useful to him than a mindless rag-doll.

"Then you wish to stay…?" Kain asked, lowering his voice, the words stagnating in the ghostly air for a few moments…

"I don't know…" He muttered, clearly in a kind of emotional strangulation. His human instincts were screaming at him to survive, but the rational part was in no doubt about what would happen to him… It was late afternoon and he knew he might not even live to see nightfall…

-Suddenly, the young cop started to rummage about in his pocket with his good arm and pulled out a long golden chain with a beautiful golden disc attached to the end – a pendant – and held it in the air out in front of him.

"Take this."

Kain frowned in mid confusion. "Why?" It was of no use to him and the cop should have worked out that Kain thought in that way by now…

"…A friend of mine… a reporter gave it to me. Now for the past few weeks he's been acting… weird. He let on that he'd found out something big about the Raccoon forest disaster and all that, but… well… He was really excited about it but then shut up less than a week ago… He gave me this locket two days ago… he said he'd found it when 'investigating'. I figured it was something important because he never tells me when he goes 'investigating' because nine times out of ten he gets arrested he has to put up with being lectured by me about it… He said he found it in the sewers. The freak had been down there a lot recently ever since another cop called Neil Carlsen reported someone trying to blow the sewers passages up. I… didn't really know what he was talking about at first. It was all pretty much a jumble to anyone listening who doesn't know anything about the Raccoon forest disaster…"

"What did he tell you?" Kain asked, the boys tired confessions piquing at his interest.

"I… I wasn't listening to him as much as I should have…" He confessed. "His words were all over the place, like he was in a hurry…" -

- "When he gave it to you?" Kain butted in. the boy looked up at the sound of his almost urgent words. "Two days ago when he gave it to you?"

"Yeah…"

"_William changed two days ago…" _Kain thought. _"The blood of the city dwellers began to sour two days ago. The reporter must have been aware of this…"_

Kain took the locket from the injured cop and quickly hung it around his neck with one hand, not removing his astonished gaze from the crippled form of the cop boy.

"Did he mention a name?"

"Irons. Brian Irons. The chief of police. Him and some guy named William. I'm sorry; I wasn't listening to him properly… He hates Irons enough as it is… I thought … I just thought this was one of his usual rants, you know?"

Kain nodded sympathetically. His thoughts collecting, he now knew that the R.P.D was undoubtedly his next location. There, all his answer lay and right now, answers were his only hope of escaping this world plagued by humanity.

Looking down at the boy pitifully, he knew he should leave him to die before the creature regained its consciousness but found that he was unable to tear himself away. Kain couldn't understand what was wrong with him. The glassy, painful look in the boys' dark eyes, the tortured resignation that was all over his now deathly pail face. . . It was _doing_ something to him. . .

"Why are you still here?" The boy asked, propping his good hand up on his knee for support enough to look at him.

"I-" Kain stuttered. His words left him, and the boy straightened up his sitting position. He frowned slightly, not a hostile demonstration, but more confused than anything. "I don't know why."

The boy shook his head. "You're worried about me, but"-

-"You're _wrong_." He growled suddenly, interrupting him. "I care not for the life of some mortal"-

"Mortal. . . There you go again with that talk. . . I don't care what you are right now, but whatever you are, you can't be as immortal as you'd like." Kain frowned, finding his dark blood boiling at the disgusting impudence of the boy. If it was his own mortality he wanted to prove, then-

-The boy suddenly drew his gun and pointed it directly at Kains' head. The cop didn't blink, didn't even seem to care about the recklessness of his action, but Kain cared. His problem was that he cared too much. The very second he lowered that weapon, he would _kill_ that bastard. . .

"Well?" He smiled, pulling back the hammer on the deadly weapon. "Attack me. Come at me with everything you have."

Kain didn't move, only grimaced low and dangerously.

"You can't, can you? Because you know that the second you move, I'll blow your brains out." He was eerily well spoken for a boy close to death. He was filled with a kind of strength, induced as he realized this could be his last act as a living being. He stood, weapon unwavering from his forehead and paced slowly closer to him, burying the muzzle of the gun into Kains sleek, milky white cheek when he reached close proximity. If the cop had any previous doubt about Kain's nature before, at this close range he could see that the colour in his skin wasn't any kind of makeup. The stench of the blood that the cops' arm was covered in was driving Kain's senses crazy. The sharp, rich musk torturing him, his eyes glazed over like a mad animal and his mouth uncontrollably salivating. He swallowed hard to contain his excitement.

"You want to kill me, I can see it in your eyes, but you're not: why?" He waited a few moments, as if expecting Kain to answer. "Because I can blow your head clean off, cant I? If you're so immortal, then a bullet to the brain wouldn't do shit! You can die, Kain! You may not be as weak as normal people but you can still fucking die. If you fight stupid, those zombies _will_ get you. It's not a question of how strong you are, or even what the hell you are, but if you don't realized your own fucking mortality. . . well then shit, man! This place is already full of bitter irony! You'll be asking for it!"

"I will NOT let those mindless creatures get the better of me, I _promise_ you of that." Kain growled, anger seeping through his unwavering, marble-like exterior like beams white-hot sunlight piercing through dark heavy clouds.

"Yeah, well most of the people in this city probably thought they could beat those mindless zombie too, but now they're dead, Kain! They're all dead! And so will you be if you keep taking the piss like this!"

He took the gun away from Kains' face and he instinctively swatted the boy aside to the floor. He yelled out in pain as he struck the bottom dirty alleyway. Kain felt pleased; he deserved the pain for threatening him like that, but though he tried to ignore it, that part of him that had hurt when he tried to leave was now telling him that he was absolutely right. . .-

-After the young cop finished his pained wails, in the silence they could hear something. . . Something that clearly drove daggers of pure terror into the heart of the young cop.

It was footsteps, heavy, thumping, pounding, thunderous footsteps of the trench coat monster, the one that was in search of the S.T.A.R.S, the one that would ultimately kill the petrified young officer.

It rounded the corner nearest the boy, and Kain felt his black heart tingle with a multitude of emotions. Amongst them was excitement, hatred, anticipation, but most unusually there was fear; fear from the weaker part of him uncovered by the long stasis in William's lab. But unnervingly for Kain, the fear wasn't for him. . . it was for the crippled boy sprawled on the floor before the beast.

"Get away from it!" Called out Kain, unable to control himself. The boy was in danger and Kain couldn't shoot at it when the officer was in his line of fire. He moved across the floor, the monsters mutilated face stuck in a scowl down at him, and then clambered to his feet. "MOVE!" Kain let out a shout in much out of character concern, no doubt brought on by the weakness caused by the stasis.

The boy stumbled on his feet, the creature almost taking some kind of pleasure in its' preys defencelessness and seemed to be watching him writhe.

"My nemesis. . ." The officer muttered gravely under his breath, before again taking out his weapon. "Run, guy!" He called back to Kain. "Move it!"

Kain's eyes widened when he realized what that boy was planning to do. "Are you MAD?"

"GO!" The boy began to fire but the monster had watched long enough. The bullets pounding into its chest had no effect on it, and before the officer had a chance to run (if he was planning on running) its enormous thick hand was around his neck, lifting him high into the air. Kain drew his shotgun, but couldn't shoot. . . He would undoubtedly hit the boy. . .

The creature lifted his other strong hand as it slit open and a slimy purple tentacle protruded. The young officer was about to be subjected to the same fate as the dozens of corpses littering the barricade; to have his face decimated by that revolting appendage. . .

"Get. . . away. . ." He garbled. "You just make sure. . . you. . . get away!" Kain turned and moved. He moved fast, briskly walking, almost running into the labyrinth of back alleys as fast as he could go. He forced himself not to look back and felt the disgustingly weak part of him twist and burn inside at the sound of a loud scream abruptly stop with the sound of smashing bone and wet, ripping flesh.

Kain's weakened state was causing his judgement to become clouded with strange emotions he hadn't felt in decades and he didn't like it. He couldn't guarantee he would be able to defy the young officers predictions about his mortality, unknowing whether he was mentally strong enough to cope with this hell. . . He made his way to the R.P.D at a fast pace with an unsettling feeling in the bottom of his stomach, a feeling that he new would control him if he did not learn to master it himself. . .


	3. Part3: William Birkin & RE2 Opening

Reaching the front gates of the R.P.D was indeed a gauntlet. A lesser man would defiantly have died on the way, the carnage and horror that paved the devastated streets overthrowing their hopes, and finally the mindless beasts that roamed them finishing them off. He'd seen it happen on this scale before, not in Raccoon but in Avernus, too. Avernus was in flames when he reached it in his fledgling years, demons of a size and power that could easily rival the monster that William had become had paved the streets with blood and viscera. But strangely, the insanity that ruled the streets of Raccoon was of a deeper horror. . . The knowledge that these things had been made rather than born chilled the bones… To know that hey were now nothing more than things, even less sentient than mindless animals themselves… it must have chilled the human heart to know it.

Kain wasn't so easily disturbed by the sheer destruction and carnage. The curse of blood-thirst had tainted his thoughts considerably and the sight of bloodied monsters mewing for the chance to tear through ones flesh with their disgusting moulded mouth and jagged teeth only tickled at his humour and at a hunger of his own. The city was meticulous in its organisation. It no doubt took an age to build, but its apparent greatest flaw was this very fact. Its labyrinthine form trapped the humans in its complex like a spiders web and it was only because of Kain's inhuman senses that he was able to discern the location of the R.P.D without seeing the building itself. If Kain could describe it in terms that a human could understand, he would call it a vampiric GPS. It didn't work in the same way as the scientific device but with buildings of great importance, it yielded the same results.

Kain had killed a reasonable amount of the mindless undead with weapons when there were many and with his scything bare claws when they were alone, which that was a rare occurrence but the closer he sensed he was getting to the R.P.D, the greater the amount of zombies clad in police uniforms he would find. This was a bad sign; it meant that something terrible had happened and the R.P.D was at the centre. He doubted he would find a single soul alive in there. When he reached the outskirts of the Police Department, piles of crashed squad cars, Fire Engines, Ambulances and mangled, broken bodies were piled into haphazard mounds slowly being consumed by the flames of devastation. This pathway of viscera lead to a conclusion at the R.P.D building's gates itself and served as a firm warning to the condition it must have been in inside.

Kain kicked the main gates open with the scuff of the sole of his boot and was somewhat gratified to see the very entrance to the building directly ahead of him. It had been no great task to reach the building after all-

-But Kain's relief died in his throat when another of the undead creatures leapt from behind the gates and clutched onto him wit cold dead fingers with strength no human could possess.

"No!" Kain cried involuntarily, beating the creatures face with the butt of his gun, causing fragments of flesh to disperse from the skull of the monster. It mewed hungrily as it was tossed to the floor, and only rested briefly before it tried to get to its feet to attack again, but it fell straight back down again once Kain had placed a bullet firmly in its forehead.

Kain sighed. That was much too close for him to ignore. In his arrogance he was nearly taken down by that mindless thing. He was disgusted; it was no fitting end for someone whom had come as far as him, but looking at the corps now, Kain recognised the uniform as one of those S.T.A.R.S members, and rolling it over, he noticed it must have been killed by its face being smashed open. The Nemesis, as the young officer had called it, had apparently been more successful in intercepting its target than Kain was originally aware of. Kain was still crouched by the corps when he heard something that took him completely by surprise.

-"I was right here when the Nemesis killed him."-

Kain jumped around at the sound of the impossibly familiar voice behind him, his eyes slowly tracing up the tall walls of the R.P.D, and on the figure sitting leisurely on to top.

"And I was watching when it killed that young cop too."

It was William Birkin.

"How…?" Kain let out, the words breaking free from his lips before he could close them but realised the answer to his own question before he responded. William was translucent and sitting atop that wall sideways, his knees hugged into his chest with a grace that was simply not possible in a human. At least, not in a living human. He was a spirit, but his body wasn't dead yet… "How is that that you are here? You are not yet dead…"

William paused for a moment with a smile on his face. Being dead certainly had lifted his spirits. He seemed well aware that he was now invulnerable to the attacks of the undead creatures and beyond the sight of mortal men and relished in it. He was not, however, beyond Kain's sight, vampires being creatures far more sensitive to such things than humans and Kain frowned up at William, whom was looking down at him, gleefully aware that he was beyond his reach.

"My body is not yet dead, you know that." He said, much quieter than before. "But I also know that you've realised the eye on the creatures shoulder is a clue as to who is in control of they body at present. When it is open, the G-virus forces me aside and takes control and so I am able to dislodge myself from my body. It does not mean I am dead, however. I am simply, 'astrally-projected'. So long as my body lives, even if I am not in control of it, I will be bound to it like a dog on a leash."

"How sad for you…" Kain said sarcastically.

"Anyway," William said, taking up the previous line of conversation. "I did see you with that cop earlier, and I must say it was touching to see all that."

"What do you mean?" Growled Kain, looking up at the mad scientist.

"Being a spirit allows me a certain amount of clairvoyant insight, you see…" William said slowly. "I could feel what you were feeling, Kain, and you didn't want the boy to die." William shuffled his legs around to they were now dangling over the edge of the wall, sighing into the air like he was trying to find the right words to explain what was going through his mind. "We recently discovered a form of black hole technology that allowed us to make a rip in space and slip into other dimensions, like in that movie 'Event Horizon'. The first world we stumbled into was Nosgoth, and we planned on brining a few samples back with us for research. There, we met a hooded old man by the name of Moebius."

"Moebius…"Kain muttered angrily to himself. He was very familiar with that name.

"He was very helpful." William continued, ignoring the remark. "He told us that he could tell us where to find the most powerful being we could hope to capture, and so we took him up on the offer. He took us through time to your bedside where he said you were unconscious and recovering and not due to wake up from for another 100 years yet. That would leave us plenty of time to use you without even damaging the fulcrum of that world's history, though I believe Moebius lead us to take you for the opposite reasons. Of course, we took up Moebiuses gift."

"What relevance has all this to that boys death?" Kain said impatiently.

"I'm just getting to that bit." William said impatiently back. "We'd done some background research into you, so we would know what we were dealing with. Moebius was again very helpful in supplying us with the means to view you as you were in previous time periods, and while watching you through the portals of Moebiuses 'Time Streaming Chamber' as he called it, there was always this one recurring question; how can we contain him? You see, we were all – well - gob smacked by your disregard for human life, by your sheer will to survive and to kill. Nothing - it seemed - could stop you. You were beyond any monster I or any other Umbrella scientists I have ever know could craft."

"If that is so, then how am I any different from any other monster you have made, indeed, your G-virus self even?" Kain asked, his voice laced with anger.

"Because you have a mind, Kain. You are sentient, and that is what makes you most dangerous…. You are an intelligent life form. The most complex action some of our more intelligent creatures can do is operate doors and switches but you are a truly …. A one in a million find. People who are such merciless killers are unfortunately very flawed and weak both mentally and physically. Finding you was truly an incredible discovery… but you're from another world you see… We can't ignore the fact that you are quite possibly the most unstable monster we've ever come across. We can always put turrets in, or anti-B.O.W gas to deal with our virus-based creatures, but you're a creature that works predominantly by the laws of magic; a force that practically doesn't exist in this world!"

"I'm glad you're so excited." Kain said rather plainly, if a little mockingly.

"I was at the time…" William confessed. "And I think that was what drove me to pluck your sleeping body from your world like that… completely ignorant of what your true purpose was… " William shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry for dragging you to this world with no means to escape… I wouldn't have been sorry in life… I wouldn't have given a shit about you other than that you were mine and you were perfect."

"I belong to no man." Kain barked angrily.

"In theory no, but Umbrella still owns you, and because you're not a human, human rights don't apply to you. If you don't escape this world, then some other company will pluck you up and run all kinds of tests on you and that was the very last thing I ever wanted to happen to you."

-"And yet you stored me in a tank, feeding me life through a tube and did just that."

"NO I DIDN'T!"

The sudden outburst surprised Kain, the composed mad scientist changed in a second from cold and emotionless to a violent outburst, a sudden contradictory outburst induced by Kain's statement that William had tested on him… This lead Kain to be suspicious… If he didn't test on him, then how can he claim to know so much about his physiology?

"What do you mean?" Asked Kain softly, almost in an attempt to coax answers from him; the sentiment was not serious, mind you.

"I didn't want to test directly onto your body." William explained. "You were too valuable to throw away like that, so I had a copy made… We cloned you…"

"What?" Kain snarled, disgusted by just such a violation.

William continued as if he had not heard the remark.

"The first copy died within hours of being disconnected from life support. Cloned material doesn't last as long as the original flesh, and because your body's structure was so complex it began to deteriorate almost as soon as it was left to fend for itself." Williams voice became low, almost mournful. "He… was frightened as he died… He was a fully grown man with a sentient mind, but he was only an hour old… he had no idea what was happening to him…" William hung his head, showing a remorse he didn't poses in life… "His skin and organs were breaking down and crumbling inside him like cardboard in rain, slowly turning to mush… Decaying without the decay… His frightened stare through the glass… He wanted to ask me for help but didn't know any words… His bloodied hand pressing against the glass… mewing a horrible, painful sound…"

"He was not I." Kain said sternly making that, as least, a fact.

"No…" William whined slowly. "He was you in every way… Every single way; every single the bit of the monster you are now…He WAS you only without the memories, without the knowledge of humans and vampires and without anything to call his own." He seemed to lose awareness of where he was, becoming dazed into his memories and sentiment for the creature. "And he was so innocent… Yet just as capable of becoming you…"

"So he is dead." Kain snarled. "He is not any of my concern anymore."

"No." William replied unkindly. "After that happened, I worked long and hard on making the second copy, using the G-virus to sustain it for longer than the unfortunate first copy. When we took it off of life support, however, it was trouble from the start. It had killed a few of our staff members before the order to put it back into stasis was passed, and even then it managed to break out again and go on a kind of rampage. We had to put it into a deeper sleep after that… You see, it was far more cunning, crafty and spiteful than the original clone; I suspect that was a side effect of integrating it with the G-virus… Not only that but it demonstrated vampiric behaviour, like the knowledge of the mist form, showing us that through the cloning process it had acquired at least one or two of your life memories… "

"How is that possible?" Kain demanded.

"We don't know." Replied William. "No scientific reason could explain it, which is what leads me to wonder if the first copy had memories too…" William stood erect on the wall now, gazing down at the vampire. "We named him Abel, as in Kain and Abel from the bible, but I warn you; He too is deteriorating but on a much slower scale than the first. The only way one can stop total cellular degeneration is if the DNA is replaced by integrating the originals structure into its own…"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying … that if the disaster at the lab caused the cages to open"

-"Which it did." Interrupted Kain. "I encountered one of your monsters in the lift to the swears.

"Well then there is no doubt that Abel has been released…" And William continued. "And if he is… then I should warn you, he is a very serious threat to you."

"I fear no one."

"He is an enhanced version of yourself, Kain." William reminded him. "But the only way he can become perfect is if he digests you on a cellular level, and it wont be a quick death, Kain. The G-virus is doing exactly the same thing to my body right now and the only reason I don't feel any pain is because the G-virus is not yet in full control. He will entwine your body in a grip of G-virus and slowly devour you. You wont be able to control yourself, just change painfully, like a larva in a cocoon and when he remerges, you will no longer exist, and he with be an unstoppable fiend."

"And what would happen if the transformation was interrupted?" Kain queried.

"Alas, I fear Abel is not stupid; he could have formed a parasitic attachment of some kind that would continue to rewrite your DNA to his even after the death of the original being." William confessed. "It would not make any difference other than to slow the process."

"And what if the parasite is removed?"

But before he began with an answer, slowly William began to disappear from view, fading slowly into the blackness of twilight that had crept up on the two during their conversation. William looked down at the backs of his hands as the dissolved with confusion and bewilderment. Apparently, he had not foreseen his sudden departure.

"Wait!" Called out Kain, and Williams blue stare shifted to meet his.

"I'm sorry, it… it's calling me back… The G-virus…." And with that, William had totally faded from sight.

Kain relaxed. He was alone again and the stench of rotting flesh had most certainly gotten stronger as the cold evening had set in…

-And there was a sudden explosion that shook the very earth around him, causing small bits of dirt and rubble to briefly dance across the floor. Turning to the direction of the noise, Kain could see the sky literally lit up on the other side of the RPD building, black smoke twisting and dancing into the air with red hot flames licking at it as it ascended. Kain watching the bright fires for only a few minuets, making sure the fires would not burn down the RPD building itself, but they did not appear to be catching…

-But then, literally minuets after Kain had heard the crash of some kind; he saw something rather extraordinary indeed. -

A large metal flying vessel – a helicopter – began circling the RPD with its searchlight firmly placed on a roof of some kind obstructed from Kains view. He watched these events unfold calmly from the RPD courtyard with a cold expression –

- "I can't set her down! I'll throw you a rope ladder!" Came the sudden sound of voice from some kind of amplifying device on the helicopter, and it did so, lowering a rope ladder to the area somewhere behind the building, maintaining its position carefully.

- But suddenly there was a dangerous and sharp twinkling noise; the smashing of glass and the pilot of the device lost control, the helicopter veering haphazardly through the air. Kain wasn't sure, but looking at the flying machine with his sharp inhuman eyesight, he could see holes in the metalwork of its structure… Gunshots… And more of them appeared like they were conjured into the side of the machine as the disaster continued, the tearing sound of roaring blades distorting like the machine itself was dying.

Suddenly, the machine took a slopping coarse through the night sky and into the building, and again a thundering explosion tore through the air and shook the earth beneath Kain's feet even more violently than the crash outside the RPD gates. If Kain were worried about the crash beyond the gates burning down the Police department, then if the fire that the helicopter crash caused were allowed to continue, then certainly the whole building would be consumed. Fire was one of the few things that vampires feared. If Kain entered the building and was trapped by flames, then he would be in great danger…

But the RPD structure held a certain significance to the goings on in this city and Kain's only virtue was answers. William's monster was within those walls, and William knew more on how to return Kain to Nosgoth than any other… The large greenish structures of the buildings doors dared him to enter and face the monsters that lurked within. Kain smiled to himself as he pulled the door open, the wood scraping harshly in a deep, powerful noise. The sound greeted his pointed ears in an almost dark and infamous way… His dark lips manipulated into a smile and he took up the handgun he had strapped into his wasteland. This, he felt, was going to be entertaining…


	4. Part4: Sherry Birkin

Sherry Birkin had been hiding in the bowels of the RPD building for what felt like days, yet she had watched the sun go down on that fateful date barely an hour ago. The shadows of nightfall set in by far quicker in the winter months than they had in the summer and had devoured the daylight so gradually, yet so suddenly, that she hadn't noticed the changes until nearly twilight.

After the attacks had begun, everything was so confusing… People were running around all over the place in a disorganised muddle, and that creepy Police Chief Brian Irons was yelling out orders over it all like some sort of dictator. The cops were torn between following his orders and actually doing something to protect the civilians, but Sherry didn't see if any of them survived or not. She ran. She ran away as fast as she could before someone grabbed her by the arm and tried to take her to a safe place, and that would almost mean certain death, because everywhere the adults went was a place where the zombies could get.

Sherry had found her way into the ventilation system of the RPD shortly after the attacks. It was harder than it sounded to enter such a system, the sheer orgy of confusion and carnage made it almost impossible to tell a zombie from a person in a muddle crowd, until one had hold of you, then you certainly got to find out who was who. One factor that didn't help this was that in many terrible cases, the living people trying to escape were more mutilated than some of the zombies, torn flesh hanging from their face and body. Sherry had seen this on many occasions and on every time she felt something inside her change and twist, teetering on the edge of total breakdown. She tried her hardest not to look at them as she ran as fast as she could, but she could seen them out of the corner of her eye, clawing at the floor trying to escape from the undead monsters calling to her for help, but every time they did she knew she couldn't help them, that it would be dangerous for her to try and help them, and it tore her to pieces to walk on by and all the will she could muster to continue running. She had entered the building through the parking lot; the shutters now closed and cut off from the rest of the street making it impossible for anyone to enter that way now. If one ended up in the small courtyard before the parking lot, then one would have to enter the building through the stairs to the helipad, but now, Sherry doubted very much that anyone could get in that way either.

She had been asleep in the ventilation system when the very earth shook her awake. Something had exploded somewhere in the RPD very close to her, and when she crawled through the ducts to put distance between her and the source of the noise, she felt her heart skip a beat when she noticed the ducts were warming, becoming hotter and hotter the further she went. The roar of flames became apparent when she went as deep as she could take it, her palms now unable to take much more of the heat. Something had crashed into the second floor of the building and it had cut off from one of her main escape routes. The particular part of the vent system she was in required her to escape through the path that was now unreachable to her. Whatever crashed into the building in flames was heating this particular part of the vent system so that it would become unbearable to be in in a matter of time…

There was only one other way out that Sherry really didn't want to take: To travel through a vent to the first floor that was practically a vertical drop of four meters. If she slipped while climbing down then she would either be killed or break something. On top of that, the first floor was the most dangerous one. Zombies couldn't really be bothered to climb stairs all the much, and they tend to have a nasty habit of coming through windows, as Sherry had heard off in the distance many times, the smashing of glass followed instantly by screams and gunfire. There were more monsters on the level, more winding corridors and paths on which to get lost, and when travelling through the ducts just above the East office when she was still on the fist floor, she was chilled to see just how many of the undead stood in that room, unsteadily swaying from side to side, unable to keep in balance because of the extent of their decay, and waiting ominously patiently for a victim to fall in their web.

It chilled Sherry to the bone when she beheld zombies through grills when they were unaware of any prescience. They simply stood as if waiting. Sometimes they would shamble weakly towards a noise, like gunfire from somewhere in the distance, but the inhuman why they simply waited for someone to stumble across them was disturbing, occasionally wailing cold, almost lonely howls for time to time… It made her shiver at the sight of them and yet if she came across the sight of one through the vents, she couldn't help but stop for a second to look. She saw movement and it drove her to for just a second to look, to see what it was. When it was a zombie, she almost always felt like she had been speared in the heart, but what else did she expect to see? She had come to the conclusion that maybe a part of her was hoping that she would see someone alive, someone, anyone, even if she didn't want to go with them. She tried not to think that she might be the only person left alive in the building, because when she did, the thought occurred to her that maybe she could be the only person left alive in the whole entire city, which was impossible. It must have been impossible! But when she beheld the countless masses of cop-zombies, of RPD's elite, it seemed that civilians had even less of a chance of being able to handle the situation.

The only reason Sherry had survived this far was because her mother told her to come here. The way her mother sounded as she spoke on the phone… Her voice was shaky and breaking, like something terrible had happened down at the chemical plant... It terrified her so much that she cried for a good while afterwards… Sherry wasn't stupid. Her mother had called her to warn her about something and literally hours later all this started to happen… It just sickened Sherry to make the connection between her mother and father and what was happening now. She was in a state of denial, almost; refusing to believe that this had anything to do with the zombies, but part of her knew that there was an obvious connection. Her parents had told her that at the chemical plant, they made vaccines for hospitals and cures for diseases so there was defiantly some correlation, but her mother and father probably weren't responsible for what was going on… She felt with all her being just how much she didn't want them involved, and that they were probably still at the chemical plant, laying low and waiting for the army, but another, darker part of her said that was silly. They may even be dead already…

She had started to make her way to the RPD in the late morning, at about eleven or eleven thirty and stopped off at the park on the way. It was the same park that her parents often took her to when they got some time off work, which wasn't that often. It had swings and slides and everything, and its most beautiful feature was a large tree by one of the benches that boasted huge quantities of elegant pink blossom in the spring months. Most of it was gone by late summer, which was the current season, but that didn't stop Sherry from travelling through it and stopping briefly to climb on the jungle gym for a little while. Thinking back, it should have caught her attention that it was very empty for this time of day during the weekend, but she just figured she was very lucky, and what with all the business with the carnival that was being set up for later in the day that everyone was saving their money and energy for that.

She had just jumped down from the monkey bars when she noticed a man across the park in a clearing from all the slides and stuff in the middles of the playing field. At first she thought she was just a plain man sitting down enjoying the sun, but the more she looked at him, the more she realised there was something very wrong about him. He wasn't so much sitting, as slouching down on his knees like he was sick or in pain or something… She moved closer, worried that he might be a victim of assault or something similar but as she got closer she saw something terrible… His skin was hanging from his limbs and his eyes were all cataract, his body in an early state of decay. Seeing this, Sherry knew that this was what her mother was warning her about, and without another thought, she ran.

By this time it was later on in the day. Playing in the park and remembering the happy times she had spent with her mother and father had eaten up time surprisingly quickly, but she did not regret expending so much time, even if it did mean she was caught in the brunt of the zombie attacks briefly. It was the last positive experience she had felt today and she didn't whish it was any other way.

She had run into trouble of a kind she didn't expect as she fled for the safety of the police department. The carnival had begun by that time and pushing her way through crowds of rowdy, drunken adults was an unnerving experience that had slowed her escape attempts considerably. As she rushed through, she felt angry that adults could behave so ignorantly and irresponsibly and then preach to their children proper behaviour. She could not have possibly been the only person in the city to see a zombie so early on in the day. How could the cops have ignored such a threat?

She burst free into a clearing finally, but to her shock and terror she ran straight into another person, this one grabbing her forcefully and painfully by the arms and would not let go. Sherry remembered looking at that man… How he had terrified her just as much as the zombies. His eyes were yellow and his skin cold and pure white… he looked like a monster and behaved like one too. She felt that if he hadn't let her go then there was no way she would have the strength to struggle free from his grasp. Was he infected with the zombie poison? At this time, it only affected people whom had been killed by other zombies - something in their blood infecting their victims - but at one point it must have affected living people too…

Sliding down the vents was easy enough. She didn't slip like she had feared, and now came the hardest part; leaving the safety of this one-way vent to find the entrance to another.

She crept through the lower levels of the building, trying to make herself seem as small and as insignificant as possible, trying to make as little noise as she could. She didn't even want to make herself breathe too hard for fear that some undead creature could intercept on it. Right now, she had just exited the vent system by breaking through a metal mesh barrier and had emerged into a horrible narrow corridor, green in predominant colour and very blood stained around the windows which was no doubt connected with the broken boarded window. Fresh and dry blood wetted the splintered edges that circumference the broken glass of the windows, like teeth around the gaping blackness of a dark and sinister mouth. It was through these types of windows that zombies came. Worst of all was that it was almost impossible to see what was going on outside until the monsters were at the very window itself.

Sherry was in luck. This narrow, claustrophobic corridor ended just informant of Sherry at a door less than a meter in front of her, and scuttling free from the safety of the ventilation shaft, she clutch the large doorknob with her small hand. It was so big that it filled up most of her palm, and twisting it –

- The door was suddenly forced open by something trying to enter on the other side. Instinctively, Sherry pushed opposing the force, but it was too strong for her to hold for long.

Sherry's heart exploded into a fast beating panic when she heard the rioting floury of mindless moans on the other side of the wooden door; the moans of zombies. A revolting waft of putrid flesh came over her suddenly as one of the creatures managed to wedge its rotting hand between the door and the frame. Sherry made a decision then, and quickly thrust herself away from the door - not looking back – running past the ventilation shaft that lead only to a dead end and through the narrow, gloomy corridors. She could hear them behind her, chasing her yet she couldn't work out how far behind her they were - she was just too shit scared to think rationally.

Suddenly, she noticed a pair of double doors to her left and dashed into them as soon as her fingers pressed against the wood of the door. Her irrationally terrified mind didn't seem to be aware of the possibility that the door that she was now dashing for could be even more full of zombies than the corridor but batting it's swing doors open, Sherry dived in without a logical thought in her head and raced down the isle of the room, tripping on one of the chairs in the room and falling to the floor momentarily.

This was a conference room so some kind with a storeroom in the back; that is what Sherry's eyes fixated on the second she struck the cold tiled floor. She sprang back up as if the floor was made from a springboard, dashing for the door at full power. She was crying uncontrollably now, her forehead wet with sweat and her cheeks drenched with salty tears, Sherry didn't care anymore about what was ahead of her. All her senses were focused on the things behind her. She was utterly ignorant of how far, exactly. Terror had made everything a meaningless blur. Up and down didn't exist. Reality was no longer the important thing and lacked all substance, becoming like a dread one couldn't remember.

Sherry ran into the storeroom full pelt and pulled the door closed behind her. There was a lock on the insides, which Sherry pulled immediately across, bolting the door firmly and putting something solid and unbreakable between the creatures, but her hopes were beginning to sink again when she heard the zombies were still very close by… The double doors of the operation room where hinged and didn't require turning the knobs to open them. Those things could have just pressed against it to open them, and from the disturbing sounds of scraping chairs being knocked across the room, the monsters had found their way in.

Sherry removed her ear suddenly from the door when a low, soft thud could be heard from the other side. Her blood was now running cold. She was trapped in this pokey little storage room with no apparent means of escape. Zombies didn't give up and wander off. As she had observed before, zombies would just simply stand in wait when no one was around like mindless robots. If she tried to escape, they would most certainly get her, especially now that one of them was waiting right by the door to pounce… -

-But she heard a noise off to her left that made her heart skip a beat. A horrible squelching noise, like cold ripping guts or at least that's what it sounded like to her. Her eyes were wide and teary, she slowly turned to gaze upon the creature she shared her hiding place with.

Her deep blue eyes were instantly drawn to the intense colours of red blood and sticky black viscera on the chest of a woman crumpled between a suit of armour and a stack of lime coloured chairs. Blood was only just beginning to blossom onto the floor from a tremendous slash from her crotch to her throat, deeper into her body than Sherry's whole hand-span. Sherry clapped her hands over her mouth in disgust. The woman's whole torso was shredded completely open, her flesh peeled from her body like a banana. -

-And there was a man standing over her. Piecing together terrified fragments of images in her mind, Sherry saw its pale skin stained with blood first of all and so she instantly presumed a zombie, until it turned to face her. It had its yellow piercing eyes fixed fiercely and, turning to face her, she recognised it. It was the man from the street with the pale marble skin, the one who had terrified her so: His long white hair was unmistakable.

He watched her for a moment and she regarded him too, everything seeming surreal to her with the dizzy head rush of terror. Even the soft thudding on the door of the mindless undead creatures no longer mattered to her. She was trapped with this horrific thing with its black claws grasping the bloodied tee shirt of a horrifically mutilated young woman, thick fresh blood running from his dark lips, drips falling freely onto his partially bare chest like the driving rain. His red robes that had been covering most of his chest loosened somehow and Sherry jumped to the conclusion that it had been in a struggle.

Sherry was close to losing it, feeling her desperation peak. No matter how hard she wished for there to be something, she just didn't know what to do. She couldn't quiet herself, crying loudly now.

-Kain slowly realised he recognised her and dropped the corpse of the young woman to the floor with a heavy and damp thud. On closer inspection, he saw that she was William's daughter all right. She looked so much like him it was eerie in a way…

Kain smeared the blood from his mouth and mopped up the droplets on his chest with his shawl as the small girl huddled into a corner, crying to herself. She'd wedged herself behind a stack of chairs and a covered up painting in some attempt to hide herself from him. Kain nearly felt sorry for the terrified little girl. Had this been any other place… Kain pondered what he might have done had this been Nosgoth but came up with no answer.

Kain slowly moved closer to the crying child. "She begged me to kill her." Kain told her, and she looked up at him with watery eyes, stinging and red around the lids. "She knew she would die and what I was and asked for it."

"No!" Squealed the child in a high pitched and young diminutive little voice. Kain could see she was utterly terrified of him and couldn't seem to believe that anyone would really want death, not in that agonising way at least. "You ate her! You killed her!"

Kain wept some more of the blood from the corner of his dark lips, regarding it only briefly with an indifferent glance.

"Blood is required to feed my body, child." Kain said as softly and as unthreateningly as he could manage. Kain was fully aware that if delivered incorrectly, those words could strike terror into the heart of the small child rather than informer her of what he truly was.

"Zombies do that!" She blurted out in her high voice, still balled into a corner as tightly as she could.

"I'm not a zombie." He explained clearly and gently, something new to him, and came straight out with the truth; "I am a vampire. But notably somewhat different from the vampire legends of this world"-

- "You're crazy!" She interrupted. Kain's thick eyebrows furrowed. She was trying his patience and one would not be wise to do so. He marched forward and grabbed the small girl by the collar of her vest and lifted her up to his eye level. She screamed as she did so, causing the zombies on the other side of the storeroom door to come back to life and moan mindlessly.

"Listen, girl." Kain growled, his eyes meeting her terrified stare. "At my whim you can be saved or killed. You would be unwise to argue with me." And with that he dropped her to the floor. She landed on her feet and shrived back into the wall again, still weeping.

"Why are you doing this to me?" She whined, the desperation unmistakeable in her voice. "Why do you want to do to me what you did to that lady?"

"Did I say to you I want to hurt you?"

Sherry fell silent, only the occasional stuttering breaths coming from her now as she recovered from her tears, wiping her red eyes with the sleeves of her shirt.

"What are you going to do to me?"

Kain smiled.

Abruptly, Kain began to unbolt the door and Sherry flew into panic.

"What are you doing!" She wailed, then as the door flew open she darted further into the room, but not too far, as she stopped dead suddenly when she realised with each step she was coming closer t the body of the mutilated young woman.

The zombies came piling in, and then they began falling on the floor. It was all happening so incredibly fast… The zombies that were falling on the floor were torn to bloodied shreds! At some point during the brief period it took for the creatures to come into contact with that 'vampire' and the floor, they were being torn and shredded up into bloody pulp as if they had hit the blades or a rapidly swirling fan. Was he doing all this?

The last one fell onto the pile of mashed up corpses so tainted with minced flesh and innards that it was almost impossible to discern them as once human. The man's claws were dripping, oozing with mouldy blood. They could not be wetter if he had doused them in water. He removed his red shawl from his pale body and uncaringly dried his hands on it.

Sherry's heart was like ice. She was stranded, as there was no was she was going to wade through the large pile of minced human flesh and there was so much blood running on the floor that it was nearing Sherry's feet. She backed away unable to think clearly through all the fear, and almost stumbled on the corps of the young woman the evil man had killed a moment ago.

The man, still drying his hands callously, turned to face Sherry.

"I am Kain." He said blankly. "As you can see I am quite capable of taking care of myself and you, even when the likes of you humans are not."

Sherry was having less and less doubt in her mind that this weird man really was a vampire. If zombies and the inside-out men, as she called them, could exist then why not vampires? Maybe he _was_ safer to be with than all the humans that had offered to protect her and had died shortly after; still screaming for her long after the zombies started tearing into their flesh. This evil, man may have appeared very strong, but would he last? Could she risk it? This was her life she was talking about. It wasn't about whether she trusted him or not, it was about whether she would die in his care.

Kain stepped over the pile of mutilated corpses not even looking to the ground as he did so. Sherry didn't back away this time, despite wanting to run and hide away more than anything else in the world. She wanted to show him she was not afraid, even though this evil man frightened her more than the zombies and the inside-out men put together. They were mindless hunters but he was an intelligent being. What must have been going through his head to make him do such things so coldly?

"My name's Sherry Birkin." She told him, trying to be brave, but it didn't sound in her voice. She didn't know what else to say, other than to ask him. "…Are you really a monster…?"

Kain paused. "I am." His voice was low and gruff but he didn't want to lie to her. Humans thought differently in this world, he was aware of that. He had to treat her differently from how he normally would to avoid complications.

"So… you're a vampire…?" She asked sheepishly, not wanting to meet his threatening eyes.

"Yes. But I am the only one of my kind in this world. I was brought here"- He paused. The next sentence could possibly contain the name of her father and the revelation that he was responsible for this nightmare but she was already in a state. She did not need to know such things, not now. "I was brought here by an unknown force. I know not of a way back to my world."

Sherry had fallen quiet. As she pondered this while holding back here tears, a thought slowly occurred to her, gradually cutting through the haze of fear and doubt like a ray of light slicing through the fog.

The monster! The monster that had been chasing her through the R.P.D for a whole day now! She'd forgotten all about it! If she stayed in a place outside the ventilation system for too long, then it would come. It was always hunting her down, forever wandering the police department in search of her blood.

Once, she was moving through a cold vent that travelled across the ceiling of a poorly lit and dingy basement room, she saw the horrific beast directly beneath her through a vent. It was suddenly there, causing her heart to shrivel and feel as though it was going to explode with shock and fright. It was just waiting; standing like the zombies, but Sherry could almost feel just what it was waiting for… it was waiting for _her_. Why? – She did not know… but her doubts were silenced, for everywhere she went, no matter what crevice of the R.P.D she crawled into, just when she though it was gone for good, she would hear it's mangled inhuman cry close by from some unknown depths in the R.P.D subbasement. That was why she stayed on the second floor so much. Not only were there fewer zombies, but also it was as far away as she could get from the great beast that stalked her.

The evil man – Kain, as he had called himself – could see her fly into a sudden panic. He wasn't sure what about by the looks of his puzzled expression, but didn't enquire into it, either.

"I can't come with you!" Sherry exclaimed abruptly. "There's this monster, bigger than any of the zombies and it's coming after me! I can't stay out of the vents too long or it'll find me!"

So that's how she survived this far… Kain pondered to himself. "This monster you speak of…" Kain continued, feeling a niggling suspicion inside him. "Did it have brown hair and one arm much larger than the other?"

Sherry's eyes lit up with a mix of fear and excitement. "You've seen it?"

"I've more than seen that thing." Kain said sarcastically with more than a little of it focused on the word 'that'.

"The creature took advantage of me in a weakened state and broke a few of my ribs."

Sherry's human eyes flickered to his still bare chest and back to meet his yellow stare again. Kain caught her making this movement and felt himself smile slightly.

"I healed."

Sherry's eyes widened. She didn't quite know how to respond to that, and as Kain waited for her to think up some kind or rational answer, he slipped his red cloth back onto his body, clipping it to place with the one or two strategically placed leather straps.

After he had finished, Kain moved closer to Sherry and quickly, before she could react, he wrapped hi strong claws around her midsection and lifted her up, over the piles of minced up zombies and back onto the floor next to the storeroom door. What happened next was something that Kain suspected she would do. She ran, trying to escape this strange and apparently evil man before he could do to her what he did to the zombies. Kain shifted to mist form and drifted right past her down the narrow isle of the operation room, before rematerialising directly in front of the running child. She barely avoided running into him and was frightened and startled by his abilities. She started to back off slowly again, but Kain spoke before she could attempt another escape.

"I know you are afraid of me and my capabilities, and I know you hesitate to accompany me for fear that you will end up like so many other adults you've seen perish at the hands of the mindless undead, but little human, know you not that I am far stronger than any of them, even in this weakened condition? I can assure you that I have fought and won again countless demons far stronger than the likes of these mortal made wretches. I am the single most dangerous creature in this building. Why do you not ally with me when you have the chance?"

"Because I don't want to turn into one of those bug-eating weirdoes in the Dracula movies!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"In the Dracula movies, the head vampire gets someone to do all his dirty work so all he has to do in the film is just bite people once or twice and the person who helps Dracula is usually some bug-eating freak!"

Kain chuckled sarcastically and shook his head. "You 'Raccoon City' humans have some very strange ideas about vampires indeed."-

-Sherry unexpectedly shoved past Kain and darted for the double doors of the operation room. Kain felt a twinge of anger and disappointment flair up in his dark heart before giving chase, but you young girl had taken him by surprise and was by now quite ahead of him. She was also running with apparently all her heart and soul poured into it, making it very difficult for even an inhumanly quick beast like Kain to catch up. The double doors swung back into his face and caused yet another full second of delay as he had to stop to bat them violently, and increasingly furiously, out of his way.

He emerged into the corridor just in time to hear the door to the second floor swing back and slam closed. He stopped chasing by then. By the time he ascended the stairs she would have already squeezed her way into the ventilation system. Kain continued to the stairs to the second floor at a far more relaxed pace. From his one or two previous visits to the R.P.D, he'd learnt from the questions he'd asked some officers, the S.T.A.R.S office was on the second floor.

Kain smiled: The S.T.A.R.S were as important to understanding these events as William Birkin, the keystone himself. He should give their office a good and firm examination. The Humans in this world apparently recognised the presidency of knowledge over power if a militant group such as the S.T.A.R.S even owned an office. The greatest flaw that knowledge had was that the wrong people could far more easily assimilate it than the power of others, provided they discover the right material. However, one can apparently know it all and still be felled (as William had demonstrated in the act of his death) if they lacked the power to back it up. William was weak, both emotionally and physically. Knowledge was apparently not powerful enough against brute force…

…But William's G-virus… the product of his mental fruits… of his knowledge… and now it had made him virtually unstoppable…

Kain grinned wide to himself. This proverb covered itself from contradiction quite neatly…


	5. Part5: KVAM01

Disclaimer: A lot of stuff Kain reads is from the files of RE Zero, Code: Veronica and Weksers' Report

Kain held the red jewel in his claws and regarded it curiously. Such a strange object to find in such a place… and the riddle on the statue-puzzle … about releasing it's red soul… All Kain had to do was rearrange the two flanking statues to acquire it from the central figure… The strange grinding of cogs beneath the tiled floor alerted him as to when he had placed the statue in the right position. He was rewarded with this item, no doubt a bigger piece of an even bigger puzzle. What confirmed this was the previous red jewel he had acquired from the paining above a fireplace in the storeroom just before he had encountered Sherry. He had torn into the painting upon realising the irrelevance of having a fireplace in a storeroom in the first place and saw it as a puzzle, the likes of which inhabited the Spencer estate, and he had been right.

On the Internet, he downloaded a file mentioning something about a puzzle in the mansion facility that included two jewels; a red one and a blue one. He didn't get much more time to examine these findings as the website had mysteriously been taken down later that day. Umbrella was apparently making quite sure that this now sensitive topic was being erased from the public eye and had obviously sent that team of masked men to recover the G-virus to avoid any more 'revelations' but ironically it had generated quite the opposite effect…

As he moved to open the door at the end of the corridor that contained this red jewel puzzle, Kain placed the jewel itself in a hip pack he'd taken from a corpse of one of the zombie officers he had slain back in the operation room with that little human child. Beyond this door was yet another corridor that, if the directions he had received from an officer on patrol a day earlier had been correct contained the door to the S.T.A.R.S office itself. The room was of significance to the events playing out this night so a little visit was very much in order…

He opened the dingy door to a room he sensed was full of memory and felt himself shudder somewhat from the strange sensations left behind in this little office. With his vampiric senses, all Kain could detect from the entire city, including most of the R.P.D was the same sensation of total defeat and annihilation, the supernatural essences of this world disgusted and full of woe to the point that even a human could possibly be able to detect such an aura, but from the moment Kain opened the door to the S.T.A.R.S pokey little office, a wave of nostalgia hit him. It seemed this place was full of memory and want for the days when these few cluttered desks were used by the men and women of the R.P.D S.T.A.R.S.

Seeing that the room was free from immediate danger, Kain let himself slip deeper into the supernatural force that lay parallel to this world. His soul felt lighter and his moods became less and less his own as he began to enter what humans would have called a trance-like state. Ethereal forces still existed in this world, for all of its technology, and drifting within its misty power were wisps of the memories of the land. Through his mind echoed sudden female laughter, as the memories took form in his own mind in random, meaningless shards like parts of a recalled dream. On a desk was a woman in a bluish uniform wearing a beret laughing at a young man also in some kind of uniform. Kain opened his eyes as he recalled this, looking to the very spot where he saw this happen. He watched the still, messy desk where the woman had sat that summer evening, and gradually remembered why she was laughing at that young man…

He was wearing some kind of brown leather of denim, strumming a guitar and talking, joking with the woman. Kain too smiled in fondness when he saw that the same jacket was now hung on the wall next to the desk, and the image on the back tickled him slightly. 'Made In Heaven' it read, and there was an image of an angel holding a bomb and on the floor propped against the desk was the guitar, a bit worn from use but defiantly the same one the young man had been using.

Kain looked right to a communications desk full of strange lights and dials and at them saw a man in yellow working them in the images he was detecting. Alas, it was the same S.T.A.R.S operative that had been the zombie that attacked him out in front of the R.P.D, and turning his head this time to the right, he was caught off guard by what the strange other worldly sensations where telling him when he sensed two very different things off to the right of the room.

The desk closest to him was littered with replica guns and had a kind of matured and calm presence about it, but that was not what concerned had him. The farthest desk, the one with the most cluttered files and apparently presided over them all, had a similar kind of presence to it as William's soul. It was not William's presence, but that of a man in possession of a very similar wicked heart. Kains' curiosity tore him from his trance-like state as his curiosity gripped him, but to his surprise, as he drifted from his extra-sensory ability, something otherworldly stayed with him. He hadn't noticed it before because it had been masked by the presence of the S.T.A.R.S members when his mind was drifting through the sense of time and reality but now it was apparent to him.

Kain stayed still but ready as his vampiric abilities told him that the presence was of a spirit, slowly becoming stronger and stronger as it struggled to enter the world of men. Kain watched wordlessly as the figure of a blonde man slowly hazed into view, standing with his legs and lower half phased through the desk of the evil S.T.A.R.S member. The spirit was of a fairly handsome blonde man in a white lab coat with mournful blue eyes. He looked at Kain with a visage of abject sorrow, and simply stood through the desk, as if waiting….

"Who are you, spirit?" Kain commanded. There were a few moments of painful silence, before the spirit gradually said;

"…John Howe… Of the Arklay facility…"

"You were in the mansion disaster?" Kain inquired.

John just gently nodded, not letting up on his hurt expressions.

"What happened to you?" Kain asked, seriously curious

"…I… don't know exactly… We thought it was something to do with the water tank bursting in the basement… but the T-virus that infected all of us was… from a different source… I've heard since that it was a vengeance campaign by an ex-employee…"

"Much like what's happening to this city now." Kain said with a somewhat edge of humour in his tone. John didn't find it very funny, infact he didn't even react to the comment. His head slowly dropped, looking down at the files and papers he was standing through, and slowly, one thick file of paper stapled together in one corner was drawn from the stacks and fell to the floor with a soft thump.

"This was what he was looking for." John said, and Kain realised that the main desk John was standing through was messy because someone had apparently hurriedly searched it before giving up. "You should check it out. It has stuff in there that William wanted to keep from you."

"You know William?" Kain asked, but the realised that John had already vanished.

Kain frowned. John had been particularly cryptic about his responses, and Kain had taken into mind that he appeared much more saddened by what was going on that the man whom had committed this atrocity himself; William Birkin.

Kain moved over to the files on the floor and picked up the hefty wad of paper that had landed open on a page, making sure he read at that one, as John's enigmatic behaviour would likely be reflected by causing the file to land upon the page of most significance. Kain read the first line in his head.

'Bandersnatch' - OR1 – Antarctica Facility… Kain continued to read. 'Cerberus' - MA-39 – All Facilities, 'Chimera' - MA-2 – Arklay Laboratory Facility, 'Hunter Prototype' - MA-120 – Arklay Laboratory Facility, 'Hunter Alpha' - MA-121 Alpha – Moved To Raccoon City Chemical Plant; Capsule Room, 'Hunter Beta' - MA-121 – Moved To Raccoon City Hospital, 'Beta Hunter Gamma' - MA-124 Gamma – Move To Raccoon City Hospital… 

It appeared that when a specimen was moved, the original location would be stated, then the destination, then the move date for example, the Hunter Prototype had next to it's name 'Arklay R. Chemical Plant - Jan '97'. This list would have been of great power to someone who desired to hurt the Umbrella Corporation, and if the man whom had owned this desk really was in the same boat as William had been, then it was highly likely he had tried to find these notes for that reason but gave up, assuming them stolen, or the alternative scenario was that a rival company member had tried to find them and had been disturbed somehow. John had left figuring out that part up to-

-Kain's yellow eyes widened when he noticed a name beneath a listing of Ivy botany experiments.

" 'Kain' – K-VAM –01 – Location Classified Antarctica Facility –" And the icing on the cake was the date. "Jul '91…"

Kain had to fight the boiling rage within his heart to prevent tearing these documents into tiny shreds. He had been in an unconscious state within similar tanks full of amnionic for at least seven years! William had not told him how long he had been in such a state, but Kain assumed that because William was amongst the men that acquired him from this 'classified location', then he would have been transported directly to his Chemical Plant for the cloning experiments, which William had made clear had taken only a couple of months but these documents revealed that he had spent a great amount of time being transported from facility to facility all over this disgusting world before coming to the final destination of Umbrella's Raccoon City Chemical Plant in October of last year. Kain flipped through the papers and found himself becoming even more offended every time the lists referred to him as 'K-VAM-01'.

"Just what were they doing with me for all that time?" Kain spat involuntarily, but as he finished those words, another file fell to the floor for apparently no reason.

Kain didn't hesitate to drop this list of experiments and pick up this one instead, some kind of report from the man who once owned this desk. As it had landed, several pages had become creased and Kain took that as Johns way of telling him he wished for him to view those pages. Kain read the first page with a creased corner aloud.

"My plan was to prolong the time in which the host would survive, so that we would gain the credit to the 'Nemesis project'. The host would be that women test subject. Her incredible life rate could survive longer against the Nemesis prototype. And even if it failed, nothing would change on our side. But the test had created a result I had not expected. The Nemesis prototype that tried to enter her brain had disappeared. At first, we could not tell what had happened. We did not expect her to consume the Nemesis. That was the beginning.

Something was happening inside of that failed experiment. We had decided to start research on her from scratch. In the past ten years, we had conducted every research possible on her, but we had decided to throw all those files away.

Within the 21 years that she lived, something was beginning to show. Only Birkin had begun to notice the change. Indeed, something had begun to change inside her. But that was something totally different from the T-Virus project. Something new and would bring a new idea to us. The "G-Virus" project was the project that had changed our destiny."

That was the end of the first page, and Kain felt his heart shiver at the realisation of what he had just read. This 'woman test subject' they kept referring to had the T-virus mutate into something more inside of her, mutate into Williams beloved G-virus, the very thing he had given his life for… but what had this to do with him?

Kain continued to read onto the next creased page.

"But the "G" had no need for such a thing. No one can even expect what lies ahead with the mutations. And even if we think of a way to stop the mutation, the virus would just mutate to accommodate.

7 years ago, Birkin found this in that woman. At first look, the woman had no changes on the outside, but inside, various mutations had occurred and had kept on consuming each kind of virus injected and had lived on. And over the 21 years of mutating, it had mutated so much that it would even consume the Nemesis.

The G-Virus project was to take this mutation to highest point possible. But this could lead to the "Ultimate life form" or it could end due to a disaster...could this even be called a weapon?"

The rest was illegible. Blood had stained the sheet and the ink of writing ended there for him, but Kain felt sick when the report stated that William discovered the G-virus 7 years ago, the same time Kain was first brought to a laboratory for experiment. What had they done to him? Kain leafed back through the files and read more on that woman, how she had been a test subject for all kinds of viruses for over 30 years, chained to a bed like a mindless animal, and how William Birkin had said something under his breath when he first saw her, something that the author of these files couldn't make out whether it was cursing, swearing or praise. Kain sat on the desk with the replica firearms reading through these file, and finding not one mention of himself, not even a scenario that sounded similar to his or even the very hint that he existed. This man knew Birkin and Birkin was responsible for abducting Kain while he slept; why was he not mentioned? Even an incident as petty as William growing jealous of a child genius named Alexia was logged here, so why not something as juristic as the discovery of the vampire race?

Kain skipped to another ceased page, this one badly tattered as though it had a rough journey. The only thing Kain could make out was the had written paragraph;

"At last... I've discovered a way to build a new virus type with 'Progenitor' as a base. Mixing it with the leech DNA was the breakthrough I needed... I call this new virus 'T' for 'Tyrant'." It would seem that the T-virus was acquired using the same method the G-virus was discovered; through some kind of injecting of a virus into a host and then allowing it to mutate… Kain suspected the potency of the G-virus was down to the power of the female host and the length of time it was within her…

Kain found the last creased page, another hand written file, but this time it had been photocopied, as if taken in a manner in which no one would notice it was missing… This one began to niggle at a suspicion in Kain's mind…

"After discovering the remains of an ancient virus within the genes of a queen ant, I have been concentrating on the research of ants. The ecosystem of the ants seems truly ideal to me. There is one queen ant in each anthill, and the soldier and worker ants are the queen's slaves. They dedicate their lives to the queen. The death of the queen ant means the doom of the entire anthill.

However, the soldier and worker ants can be easily replaced as long as the queen ant is alive. This is exactly the same relationship between myself and other ignorant masses. I have succeeded in creating an ideal virus by implanting the queen ant's gene into the mother virus that Spencer found.

I used my otherwise useless father as a test subject. However, as I expected, the virus caused a rapid change in his cells, triggering the complete destruction of his brain cells and body flesh. Furthermore, a special type of poison gas was generated inside his body, that the blue herb had no effect against.

Because of this, I created an antidote in case of an emergency, and stored it inside of the weapon/chemical warehouse on the B2 floor. I have decided to name this virus with unimaginable potential, the "T-Veronica" virus. When I find out how I can fully utilize the power of wonderful virus, my great research will finally be complete.

-Alexia Ashford."

Kain was beginning to understand…. There had been a theme in all the files John had wanted him to read, and that theme was finding the right DNA to make a superior version of an existing virus with. Kain flicked through a few pages and chuckled when he discovered that this 'Alexia Ashford' woman had placed her body into stasis to gradually change her body to co-exist with the T-Veronica virus, but his laughter died in his throat when he suddenly took note of something…

His discovery coincided with the discovery of the G-virus; he was transported to Alexia's Antarctica base and placed into a kind of stasis, like her… and seven years on, he had been released… A new kind of danger was becoming apparent to him… What if they had done something similar to him with the G-virus what Alexia did to herself with the T-Veronica? Or what if, because of his vastly superior physiology, he was the target of even more genetic experiments than William told him? William only told Kain what had happened from his latest roll in the story, the roll that was most likely the only one to come up in this incident; the fact that William had made a savage copy of Kain. William didn't need to tell Kain this…

But currently, everything Kain had deduced were 'what if's and he had no real proof of the occurrence… but Kain wondered that now he had been freed from stasis this weakened, if he had been subjected to more testing, did that mean the mutation was incomplete? If so, then he would become a failed experiment, like Alexia's father…

Kain moved to the door of the S.T.A.R.S office with more motivation in the quest for answers than he had had in a great while. He needed to get this information confirmed by William, for if he was infected, William could be the only man to tell him if his life was under threat, and if so, how to overcome this.


	6. Part6: Beta Version Attacks

As if the threat of annihilation by zombies, monsters and even William himself wasn't enough to belittle Kains' ego, which had been rightfully inflamed by his formerly uncontested strength, it was now a very likely fact that an evil was growing inside of him. No doubt the progress of whatever it was that had been injected into him had been slowed either by some chemical agent still circulating within him from the stasis, or by his rapidly recovering immunity to illness. He hoped that with the restoration of his strength, his body could destroy whatever virus the Umbrella Corporation had decided to test on him, but Kain could not ignore this burning, sinking feeling within him.

One of the small pieces of information that William had not withheld from him was that the second clone of him, the one they called 'Abel', was infected with G-virus to stop it from deteriorating and if it could become infected after such a short life, then there was every chance that he could succumb to it too. No matter how weakened he had been from his release from stasis, Kain deduced that he was indeed growing stronger once again, but he had believed he was simply recovering his old strength, but after reading about the capabilities of the G-virus and how it had been used to strengthen 'K-VAM-01-γ' (rather than calling it 02, γ 'gamma' indicates to a scientist that it is the second identical copy of 01 (which is alpha by default) rather than another 'VAM' type entity addressed with a name beginning with 'K' for example), Kain partly wonder if his 'regaining strength' was really the G-virus altering him and making him stronger only as a side effect of taking control. Freed from the stasis, if the G-virus really was within him then because of his weakened state, the chances of it taking him over completely was very high indeed.

Kain felt a brooding anger as he left that ST.A.R.S office, closing the door harshly behind him. The creatures Kain had faced and destroyed were nothing even compared to the beast William's physical body had become, yet within him was growing a great evil that could very well take his life. It was the only adversary he could not challenge and slaughter with his claws - a disease growing from within…

"This is still an uncertainty." Kain told himself, thinking the words firmly to reassure himself securely, but he knew that it was ludicrous to wish that the cold-blooded Umbrella scientist would just simply leave him in a specimen tank for seven years without prodding and probing and altering and copying… They must have done something to him…

Kain went on his way. Off to his right was the way back to the stairs that lead to the first floor, and to his left, the grey corridor kinked down again in a left turn, so that what was beyond it was a mystery to him. Littering the hard, dull wooden floor at haphazard points were remnants of broken bottle-glass mixed in with just a hint of human blood. Blood that Kain sensed had been tainted with the zombie-making virus so knew not to touch or taste it. If he had been at full strength then his body may even have resisted the effects of it, but he was so greatly weakened in comparison to his original prowess that even he was not confident of his own abilities, and Kain was notorious for his self-assured arrogance in the face of an uncertain danger. He moved on, and became aware suddenly that something had changed about this corridor. The stench of death had not been so intense when he entered the office…

Kain drew the weapon he had obtained from William and intended to make good use of it, maybe for the first time since William had fired it. Kain tried but couldn't recall precisely if he had used it since, and became further aware of just how he had been weakened sufficiently for the condition to even effect his mental operation; something such as that would not have escaped his awareness so easily prior to his abduction.

Sneaking silently to where the stink of rotting blood was strongest, Kain prepared himself to round the corns, back pressed firmly against the wall, when he heard something that told him his senses were not leaving him completely: A snarling moan and a wet shredding sound followed by gargled phlegmy sounds as the creature continued to moan as it no doubt buried it's face into the viscera of whatever or whoever it was devouring. The thought occurred in his mind briefly that it could be that little human child it was feasting on, but he disregarded it right away. She would have the sense to run from danger, wouldn't she?

Kain rounded the corner will no delay, no stiff, gradual turning to witness an intense horror like so many humans in the movies would do. He faced the creature head on, and saw to his relief that it was just another zombie and nothing stronger eating what was left of one of the officers.

He confidently put the gun away as he chuckled in amusement to himself at how marvellously messy a kill it had been: The entire end of that corridor was smeared with bloody handprints, scratches from what appeared to have been human fingers and wet marks dragging across the wall all focused on one almightily splatter on the door that itself dragged down to the corpse of the… well… what was once recognisable as a man on the floor. The animal itself, which had its back to Kain, was in a very advanced stage of decay. Every open wound on the creature he could see was filled with soft black blood tainted occasionally with streaks of deep red that glistened when they caught the light. It's pail white skin had been tainted brownish with the stains of old blood, which was now being consumed by the new blood creeping from rotten holes all over its body as well as fresh blood from the squelching, tattered mess that was once a being. The corpse was in very bad shape for the victim of just one zombie attack. Had Kain seen the body after the creature had left, he certainly would have believed he was torn to pieces by something far powerful that a zombie, and several of those at that! -

-Kain began to feel as though a part of him had realised something his conscious self had not yet noticed and so took another, more complete glance at the zombie creature that was burying its face into the guts of the man. After what he had discovered in the S.T.A.R.S office thanks to that spirit, any little suspicion he had that something wasn't as it should be, he would decided to follow up on. Information was the key to everything in this world. It was knowledge that brought him to this world; the knowledge of the human scientists that had created whatever had opened a path to Nosgoth, the knowledge of Birkin that had caused this nightmare in every form, and it was the human scientists thirst for knowledge that had kept him in this world for seven years. He needed to know it all or face the consequences of ignorance; his own annihilation or the damnation of spending the rest of his days in this disgusting world.

The zombie creature painfully drew its head up from the fresh sticky mess and Kain noticed something more about his appearance that set alarm bells ringing out inside him.

Its hair was white. White and the same length as his, and though some of it was stained with viscera, new and old, there was no mistaking that it greatly resembled him from behind.

Kain stepped backwards slightly and involuntarily as it shakily raised itself up onto its feet clad with toeless socks and began to turn to face him. Kain noticed that the socks were toeless because that its black claws protruding from its feet would cut the fabric and felt dread set in as it turned now half toward him. It was taking an age to turn, and Kain could now see why. Most of its arms were rotten and full of tattered holes, holes that were rimmed with yellow dripping puss and other unidentifiable fluids, but most torn and flayed of all its body was its stomach cavity.

The skin from its groin to its pectorals was simply not there anymore, and it was in such an advanced stage of decay that all the insides of the beast were drooping and blackish in colour, sagging from its body like decoration thick in forever flowing blood and sinew. This was no exaggeration. The monster appeared as thought it had its body turned inside out with only certain parts of its flesh still visible. The top half of its face was still there, but its cheeks, its nose… all of it was completely absent of flesh. There was so much gore and violent things running from where its mouth was supposed to be that one could not tell where the face began or where bone was. The only distinct feature discernable in the bloodied rotten mouth was a few sharp, almost metal in appearance, teeth poking through bits of flesh. These were apparent only for a few seconds before being hidden again by another thick ooze of dark blood.

It was facing Kain now, the thing hooked over and continually secreting blood in thick, viscous puddles on the floorboards. Kain shook his head in denial at the thing he was regarding. It was him. Himself. And Kain felt reality distort as he simply watched it watch him like the mindless animal it was.

At that moment, he recalled something Malek had said to him in his youth.

'It is not often that a man sees his own corpse, it is a sobering experience.'

Kain now understood those words fully. It was a very different experience from looking into a mirror and seeing this creature stare back. It was something quite indescribable…

On the zombies' right pectoral, Kain made out the faint markings of a black tattoo beneath crusty, streaky brown bloodstains. It was the symbol 'β' (beta). This thing had to have been K-VAM-01- B

'γ' (Gamma) had been the creature William had referred to as Abel, and this certainly was not it, yet it walked… William had told Kain that Abel was most likely loose, but failed to mention that beta version could also be on the prowl.

Also William had told Kain a rather touching story of how he had watched beta type gradually deteriorate and decay; yet here he was! Kain gritted his teeth. This was yet one further 'tiny' piece of information William had unwaveringly decided to keep from him. William hadn't told him that subsequent to its death, beta type had been subjected to further tests with the legendary 'T-virus'. It was rather impressive that such a senseless creature could have come this far, unless of course it was not as mindless as the formally human variety of zombies indeed were.

After taking some additional time to read through the files John wished him to view back in the S.T.A.R.S office, Kain had learnt how different people had reacted differently to the effects of the T-virus. Some kinds people would just simply die, others would die and become zombies, all the way up to the prowess of the project called 'T-002', which was a Tyrant, the most improbable form a T-virus contaminated victim could possibly take, it could without doubt equal the William mutation with its raw physical power. William belonged to the breed of gentleman who would not neglect one single opportunity to learn all he can from a virus, and now, thinking it over more thoroughly, Kain understood that it would have been a foolish thing to think anything other than the likelihood that William had subjected the T-virus to the body of beta type fully on purpose. He must have been curious and Kain could hardly blame him. He knew that he must have seemed perfect to them and William was the kind of man to improve upon perfection until its very limits.

But this thing was far from perfection. It was even significantly more brutal and ravenous than even the conventional zombie. The vampires desire for bloodlust on top of the nature of a zombie to seek out and destroy life must have been too intense a cocktail for death to smother.

The creature struggled to take a step forward, peeling its decaying foot from the floorboards that had been glued down with a thick paste of its own blood. It stumbled somewhat, a shudder going through its mutilated frame. Kain braced himself for whatever would follow.

Every point on its body unexpectedly rose up, like a rash of large goose bumps all rising simultaneously and moving gently under its remaining skin, like something beneath it was struggling, trying to burst free. Kain prepared himself with a lump in his throat. This disgusting blasphemy was William's work through and through. Kain would punish him at their next encounter, but for the moment, Kain's goat was to destroy this sickening abomina-

-From every lump covering its body, a mass of bloodied, fatty tentacles burst free, struggling and writhing in the air, covering every inch of it with a busy struggling mass of grasping appendages. Only its vague shape was visible now, almost totally hidden by the vine like, squirming tentacles. Kain drew his weapon without delay, not wishing to hazard an attempting to physically attack that… horrifying thing that claimed his image. Maleks words sounded again in his mind as it lifted its twitching arms in an unnerving, spasmodic fashion and hissed a hungry howl. Was this what would happen to him if he ever became infected with the T-virus!

The impossible creature then performed an action that was very much unlike usual zombie behaviour. It crouched abruptly, then leapt at him, jumped high up and clung to the ceiling of the building, scuttling across it on its back with its tentacles clasping to the heating pipes and electric cables running through the ceiling, and sprang from its point, open wide, at Kain. Kain evaded the attack by jumping back in the direction of the S.T.A.R.S office, barely managing to prevent himself from stumbling over in his haste. Kain was certainly not going to underestimate it. It was himself in every possible way and he knew better than anyone that to underestimate Kain, would be their ruin.

Its turn was slow and sluggish, but once he was precisely in front of it, it attempted another savage attack, a dashing slice, nearly tearing flesh from _his_ body. It didn't stop moving, it didn't stop attacking. Kain didn't know how much longer he could evade it. It was just so fast! It couldn't have been simply due to the fact it was of vampire origin…

He needed to kill it immediately before it got lucky and one of it's wildly flailing limbs tore open his skin and most likely infected him.

After it threw one of its large swinging punches, Kain chanced to lung towards the actual creature itself in its moment of weakness, grasping its face in his pale clawed hands and twisting it violently before it had a chance to react. It dropped down dead, this time for good, as its head came away in his hands. Once satisfied it had stopped moving, Kain curiously turned the bloody lump of flesh that was the head over in his hands until the face, or what was left of it, met his. Chillingly, despite being mutilated beyond recognition with decay and tentacles bursting from every inch of it, it skull of the head… Kain felt the cheekbones under his fingers as held it and shivered at how alike they felt to his. He'd tried to distance himself from it mentally, but there was no way to deny that this was _him_ in every way except for the memories that only he possessed.

And it had died.

HE had died.

He understood entirely now what the young rookie officer at the beginning of his quest was saying now. Things in this world that died once can die again, and he was absolutely no exception.

Kain dropped the tatty head to the floor with a heavy thump and it rolled so that it was now facing away from him. Its blood mingled with the matted, formerly white hair and slowly pooled beneath it in a tainted puddle, gradually soaking into the dark floorboards.

Kain was certainly not a faint-hearted man; His nature saw to that, but he was more disgusted by the meaning of it all… by what it represented….

"What so-called… human would create such a sickening parody of nature? And… of _ME_? How can such a mindless zombie, even of myself, have such power?"-

- "Because it's not a zombie."

Kain turned sharply around to see the man to whom his sheer hatred and abhorrence for that creature was directed at, the ghost of William Birkin. Or at least the visual representation of his astral projection. What served to enraged Kain further was the leisurely manner in which he was standing, with his arms comfortably folded and leading against a wall right next to the S.T.A.R.S office, a little distance away from him.

"What did you say?" Kain enquired in mild disbelief that this man could be human after doing what he had done. (Technically speaking of course, seeing as his body, wherever it may be, wasn't really human anymore…)

"I said it's not exactly a zombie – boy- one would be forgiven for believing that I'd not have to repeat myself with your" William made quotation marks with his fingers. "'Finely tuned vampiric senses.' We call it a V-ACT or 'Crimson head' as it was dubbed because of its taste for carnage and it is what happens if a zombie is allowed to enter a dormant state, usually after being taken out without decapitating or burning it."

This was bad news for anyone stuck in the R.P.D building. Kain had not encountered a single Crimson before this encounter, implying that none of the zombies had been killed or taken out by any survivors. It meant that his chances of finding any human life within the building were dreadfully low.

"How could you do this to ME?" Kain barked, genuinely angered by the disgusting freak of human nature. "To violate my body in such a way?"

"You're beginning to sound like an ex-girlfriend." William chuckled but then glared at him seriously, not altering his relaxed posture, however. "I didn't want to do it Kain, and it was the first time since I saw that failed female test subject back in the Spencer estate that I felt as though I couldn't do this. Do you know what that means?"

"I don't care – you still did this."-

-"I know!" Whined William abruptly, unfolding his arms and balling his hands to fists. "I go through every moment, every SECOND of my existence knowing that this, ALL OF THIS is my doing! Do you have ANY idea what it's like to both know and feel that a whole… world came toppling down into anarchy and pain merely at one… apparently… insignificant… whimsical…. choice?"

William seemed close to tears, but though Kain wasn't buying it (how could he? This man was clearly even sicker than he was) he spoke in a low and soft manner;

"I know, William… Believe me, I know… Better than anyone, I know what it's like to have the world healed or damned at your whim, and choose damnation…"

"Do you regret it?" William asked, calmly.

"What?"

"I said do you regret it?"

Kain thought for a few moments about that and then recalled what the situation was a minute ago, finding his anger flooding back into him in crashing, hot waves.

"It matters not! You will pay for the crimes you have committed against myself and my nature."-

-"I think I'm pretty much paying for it now, don't you?" William sighed.

"Then you are wrong." Kain barked. "This is but only the beginning of the pain I shall deliver unto you, Birkin."

"I'm an astral projection, remember?" William said, becoming a quirky kind of playful again. " And though I did this to your copy, I did it because it was my scientific obligation to do so, not because I wanted to mess you up. And besides this result is beyond what I was expecting, making it a very good thing I did this."

"You're insane."

"Well, yeah – where have you been for the past several days? As I was saying, I was expecting it to become a plain old zombie, but that thing changed straight into a V-ACT! Do you know what that means?"

"I feel you are going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not."

"It means that it, and therefore you, were already zombies to begin with!"

"Impossible – I am a vampire."

-"A reanimated corps, technically, hence all the undead imagery where referring to vampires in our literature. It finally makes perfect sense to me, Kain! When a vampire makes another vampire, something very similar to T-virus infection is happening! We understand that in your world, vampires take much more time and energy to make because some kind of 'magic' as Moebius calls it, is breathed into your corpses that then restores you. It's because that this process is so taxing that sire-ing a vampire can't be done at the drop of a hat, meaning that extinction is very possible for your race under Sarafan rule. It makes sense to me. If it was simply a matter of drinking vampire blood, then infect a town's water supply and within a number of days all the humans would become vampires. But you see this matter of breathing some airborne chemical into the corps intrigues me. Airborne T-virus reanimates a corpse in much the same way, apart from the lack of faculties and the progressive decay, so what I believe is happening to you vampires is an incredibly, exceedingly advanced for so zombification. And as a result when one of you becomes infected with T-virus, your body is already zombified so it mutates you into the next level, a Crimson."

"So this knowledge comes at the cost of his life? Most of what you have just said I could tell you myself!"

"Suddenly this concern and a value of life!" William chuckled. "It's funny that you only care for the losing of lives when they are yours. It's a shame you won't meet your destiny head on and just die."

"This is NOT my destiny!"

"You're right, it isn't… But this world is outside all your 'Time Stream' bullshit. Whereas in Nosgoth you have a prewritten path that is incontrovertible bar a few glitches, you do not belong in this world, and so you do not have a written path, that is if this world has a similar Time Stream mechanism to it. You are a foreign object in this world and you can change its prewritten path, as well as ours change yours. That was how we were able to abduct you even though your worlds destiny said you were to remain in that coma for 200 years solid."

"So you are saying I have the power to alter the fate of this world… of this very night?"

William nodded. He then paced towards Kain, past Kain and to the corpse of the K-VAM-01-BETA on the wooden floor. Kain turned as he walked past to study him closely, in case he tried anything strange or showed an emotion on his face that he did not intend for Kain to see. William told no secrets in his expression as he crouched and looked over the mess, and then rose to his feet to face him. He then smiled bizarrely.

"Is there anything you want to ask me about?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I can see it in your face, like you're hungry… for answers."

Kain remembered himself and the danger he could face growing within him and barked.

"I stumbled across some notes recently"-

-"I know. Those were Weskers'. He died before he could hide them. John gave them to you didn't he?"

"That is irrelevant!"

"Oh no it has all the relevance… John has always seemed a bit of an enigma to me and I him… And he could never turn down a mystery, the nosey man – that must be why he showed you those notes, to carry on his quest for the answer to this all."

"And do you have the answer?" Kain growled.

William grinned craftily and widely as he quoted a line from Kains' past: "I have the answers if you have the questions. What are the questions for these answers?"

This infuriated Kain, but he continued to ask. "What was happening to me over those seven years? Speak!"

"You were gestating in a tank, Kain."

"Before then!"

With a heavy sigh, William gave a tired and friendly smile. "John really did show you all the cards, didn't he?"

"I haven't the time for your childish banter, scientist! I need answers; What is inside of me!"

William's smile creased to a sick smirk, then his eyes shifted to something behind Kain.

"Who're you talking to, guy?" A young female voice from behind him, Kain spun around to meet the stare of a beautiful – and frightened – young woman. Her blue eyes were tainted by the terror of Raccoon city and with her creamy cheek with a smudge of dirt upon it, had the situation been different, Kain would consider her a most luxurious prize of a nights hunt.

But the situation was indeed different.

She tightened her ponytail and put away her own firearm in a strap on her hip pack that also served as a hip belt to her pink denim cut-off shots. She was wearing both pink shorts and vest, and beneath that was a kind of waterproof, figure hugging black garment that covered only to the tops of her knees and her elbows, some kind of feminine yet tomboyish fashion that Kain found most puzzling to him.

"Are you… okay?" She asked in her musical yet youthful voice, now clearly unnerved by his appearance. Kain did not hear her, however, and found his self-control diminishing.

Such a beautiful prize –

He could smell it running up and down her neck: The fresh, sweet juice throbbing up her Carotid and the matured, seasoned liquid running down her Jugular. He was unaware that his dry, dark lips were parted eagerly willing to accept her gift of red, wet elixir into his mouth. His fangs grew in size at the tantalizing anticipation much like the erotic sensation of the male and he sucked at him lips as if it would serve to silence his cravings.

He had just remembered how starving he was and badly wanted her blood. That look showed upon on his pale, predatory face. She took a jump back with an alarmed yet confident look upon her face and pulled out her weapon once again.

"Back the fuck away from me!" She yelled, trying to sound authorities yet her pathetic please only served to arouse his predatory instincts further, like a small powerless animal hunted into a corner.

However she was not as powerless as he might have liked.

There was a bizarre popping noise and he felt something whiz past his ear. Smoke was trickling from the muzzle, ascending into the air and vanishing like a shadow fleeing light. She had fired her weapon at him! And she hadn't stopped there, either. She fired again and this bullet did _not_ miss him. The small chunk of metal bore its way deep into his shoulder, shattering every scrap of flesh it came into contact with, splintering the very bone it was stopped by. For such a small thing, the pain was incredible and Kain, gritting his teeth, shrivelled up, clutching the hot throbbing pain on his left shoulder. Now he knew how William must have felt when those men shot him, but Birkin had been riddled through like Swiss cheese with these and had been in almost complete composure! Kain was not expecting such agony from such a little thing…

Kain did not see that the young had woman instantly regret what she had done even as the bullet left the very chamber itself and now stood with one fingerless gloved-clad hand clasped over her open mouth, her feminine face twisted with shock and disgust at what she did. When he cried out when the bullet hit him, he'd scared some sense back into her. He wasn't a zombie, he wasn't going to zombify, at least not yet, and she had just shot an innocent man simply because he creeped her out a bit. The horror of Raccoon city had got to her alright, and had made it all seem like some kind of sub-real experience, almost like a game. It was sick, but the truth was that it must have been the human mind's way of coping with the carnage… without going insane…

"Oh god…" She muttered woefully. "I'm – I'm sorry! I didn't - I don't know why I did that!"

Kain didn't respond, closing his eyes tight shut and hissing through his teeth as he wedged his claw into the ragged bloody hole and pulled out the piece of metal.

"Hey- you shouldn't do that!" She protested. "It might become infected with something."- She stepped towards him, rummaging in her hip pack for that first aid spray she picked up back in the Operation Room but was shoved violently away by the pale man, tripping and fell onto the floor from the sudden, unexpected force.

"You've done enough damage to me already, little bitch." He protested violently, and in her shock, the young woman scooted away from him across the wooden floor on her very hands and knees. He was angry, but though one would believe that it was understandable under the circumstances, he had been acting furious, aggressive and unpredictable even before Claire pulled that trigger. She had been genuinely fearful for the safety of her life when his piercing glance penetrated her soul leaving her feeling vulnerable and open to attack. It was a feeling she despised, making her uncomfortable and exposed to his will. If he had the power to do that with just a glance, she was too terrified to see what he could do to her if he managed to touch her, not that she was going to let him get near her after he had batted her away so powerfully with his bad arm, the arm she had planted a bullet in and should be incapacitated.

He was as white as a sheet and that didn't look too healthy. Was he turning into a zombie? It didn't look artificial…

"Who… are you?" She asked, trying to sound authoritative but failing dramatically, causing her to sound like a frightened little girl. She kicked herself for that, but awaited a response.

"What does it matter?" He spat rising up above her after plucking the bullet out as if it were a mere splinter. "It is indeed a wonder you have survived this long. I gauge that your time in this world is not long, girl."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, with a most annoying, teenage tone in her voice, climbing to her feet to face him boldly. "You're not making any sense."

"Know you not that every officer in this building is dead? How long do you think you can fare against the monsters and horrors lurking in this very establishment? Your time is short, mortal."

"Mortal?" The girl repeated, clearly confused by his strange dialect but continued to argue with him despite this. "And you're wrong about there not being a cop left alive. I came to the R.P.D with someone else: a rookie cop called Leon Kennedy. It's his first day on the job and he's as clueless about all this stuff as I am! Watch out for him, will you?"

"I will be sure to try." Kain responded, insincerely. "So, you were not here to witness the beginning of the end?"

"No, I came into town to look for my brother Chirs. I'm just about to check out the S.T.A.R.S office for him."

"Your brother was with the R.P.D S.T.A.R.S?" Kain queried, slightly baffled by this girls connection. She nodded her response. "I am afraid you will not find him here, girl. After the Mansion incident, Chris and the remaining S.T.A.R.S members disappeared."

"Yeah… I heard about that…" She said mournfully, hanging her head.

Kain recalled a memory he experienced while in the S.T.A.R.S office, the one of how he had felt the prescience of a young woman and man, the man wearing a strange leather jacket playing a guitar. He must have been her brother Chris, and as she turned back to the S.T.A.R.S office door, Kain received further conformation of this.

On the back of her denim vest was an angel holding a bomb with the slogan 'made in heaven' along the top. Kain chuckled, recognising the pattern from Chris' jacket. They must have been close…

"Have you been in there?" She asked, still turned to face the door.

"I have." He replied. "But the room has already been searched; you will be hard pressed to find anything in that mess."

She let out a heavy sigh. Clearly this was not the response she wanted to hear.

"Think I'll go check it out anyway, 'case you missed something."

William giggled to himself at her presumptuous words, and in the process reminded Kain that he was still there, watching this all wordlessly, however the girl had not seemed to notice him, despite having deliberately positioned himself right next to the S.T.A.R.S office door, leaning against it almost carefree in way.

"I can assure you I did not miss anything of importance." Kain grumbled, trying not to lose his temper but as she moved, Kain saw that she was facing William and still hasn't noticed him. William found it odd too, raising one eyebrow as the woman placed her hand on the doorknob, straight through Williams' insubstantial form-

-and drew it away suddenly with a gasp. William jumped too from the sudden movement.

"What is the matter?" Asked Kain, playing along with her total ignorance towards Williams' existence.

"My hand…!" She somewhat exclaimed, staring with a frown at it unable to work out what had just happened to it. "I felt like I just bathed it in cold… air!"

William smiled.

"She must not be able to sense spirits half as well as you can." He chuckled as she further studied her hand. "I've heard thing on T.V that I previously assumed to be bullshit. Things like, how children and the innocent can sense paranormal things better than others. She must be a very down to earth woman if she couldn't detect me until she made contact. Assume you can see me clearly, Kain, because vampires are particularly suited to handling non-scientific based forces and so are incredibly sensitive to them."

"And what of your child?" Asked Kain, wondering if it was possible that Williams little daughter would be able to sense the spirit of her father.

"Child?" Asked the young woman, puzzled. Kain felt foolish to have said that aloud after William's explanation.

"I meant to say…" Kain thought quickly, much to the amusement of William, who was laughing out loud and distracting Kain. "Have you seen a small female human child in this building? I encountered her earlier and she did come this way."

"A little girl?" She asked. "There's a little girl running around in the police station with all those monsters around and you let her get away?"

"I did not LET her do anything." Kain growled, extremely irritated by both her unjustified accusations and by William's weird laughter, which Kain felt was exceptionally pointless and unnecessary, directly solely to annoy Kain further. "That girl escaped me but I can assure you that on our next meeting I WILL secure her."

"Yeah… You better…" She muttered, and William's laughter finally came to its conclusion, and he wiped a tear from his eye.

"It wasn't funny." Kain growled under his breath, now no longer able to contain his impatience for the mad scientist.

"What?" She asked, again hearing his comment. Kain frowned; nothing seemed to get past her.

"Nothing." He responded, "I meant to ask for your name." The truth was that he really didn't care what her name was, but if he were to encounter Williams' daughter and this woman got to her first, if he knew her name then the little girl would see him more as an friend rather than the potential foe she saw him as back in the Operation room.

"I'm Claire. Claire Redfield. I came here looking for my brother Chris, but it looks like he's not here, luckily." She responded with a smile, a smile that lit up her tired, pale face like a moment of sunlight through the murk of disgust that had a permanent grip of her features so long as she was in this accursed Raccoon City. "You?"

"I am Kain." He answered with an air of authority and defiance in his words. He wanted her to know from the very moment of their official meeting. "I am here…." He suddenly realized he didn't have an explanation to be here, or indeed why he was here. If he told her that he simply wished to find a way out of Raccoon City, then she would wonder why he was exploring this building rather than out in the streets trying to find an escape. She clearly came here with that young rookie officer she mentioned earlier and was now trapped within the R.P.D building. Maybe the mortal was naïve enough to believe he would aid her in her escape…

He remembered he had drifted off into that thought mid sentence and hadn't given an excuse for him being here. Claire was glaring at him with a confused and questioning look upon her soft face her mouth open slightly in perplexed disbelief, and behind her, William was leaning off the wall imitating exactly the same look only on his face, however Williams' version of her expression had a disingenuous overtone that showed he was mocking Kain, serving to distract him from finding an excuse quickly.

"I'm searching for… a man." He lied. "William Birkin is his name, and that girl is his child."

"William Birkin?" Repeated Claire once again like an annoying echo.

"Awww - you're searching for me?" William said, rather than asked, again mocking Kain's poor excuse for an excuse. "I never even knew you cared!"

The truth was he didn't really care, and William knew it, but Claire didn't know it so it was good enough, and if she were to uncover any connection between him and William, then Kain had just told her a reason for it.

"Why are you looking for him? Is he a friend who got caught up in all this?"

"He's not a friend…. However…"

Claire leant forward slightly, as if she were keen to hear his reason for plunging himself into this nightmare, and simultaneously, William leaned forward too, again mimicking her actions and trying to put Kain off. He also wanted to make Kain feel uncomfortable about saying just what he saw in William Birkin to go through all this in search of him.

"However I am in search of him because he holds the answers to a dilemma of mine."

"I do?" Asked William, turning a bit serious for a moment.

"It would seem that I am infected with… something" He left out any direct mentioning that it was a virus that had cause the disease. He didn't want her to think that he had any real involvement in this. The humans of this world were far more perceptive than back in Nosgoth, even the females, but he wanted to kill two birds with one stone: giving an excuse to Claire while asking William the question that had been lingering in his mind since he read those papers. Claire had just interrupted them before he had a chance to question William, but he wasn't going to give in just yet. "This infection… has quite possibly something to do with the events taking place here today… and yet I do not know what is happening to me… It could be fatal…"

"Is it like whatever's turned all these people into zombies?" Claire asked, catching on a little too quickly for Kain's comfort.

"It is, but on an advanced level. I can reassure you that any adverse side effects shan't be an immediate threat to you."

"Uh… You kinda don't look ok, Kain… Are you sure?"

"I am fine." He said, close to barking, but he had to control his temper somewhat. If he were angry and aggressive towards her then she would believe he was infected with the zombie virus and might try to shoot him again. The bullet hole she had inflicted him with was already starting to heal, but because of his weakened condition, it was taking far longer than he was comfortable with. Normally he would have killed her for doing that to him… but it was becoming easier for him to stay his hand against the humans… It must have been something to do with the weakness that had gripped him. "You will be vigilant for the child, will you not?"

"Yeah… It's just… just that her father is mixed up in all this…"

"Indeed."

"I think I saw a little girl in a duct back when I was on the first floor, but she was there and gone so fast I didn't think I'd really seen anything…"

"She does move surprisingly quickly for a human." Kain agreed.

"'For a human'?" Repeated Claire and Kain cringed. He was accidentally letting a lot slip lately because of his diminished strength. Kain was becoming sick of explaining what he was to each and every dull mortal he stumbled across, so he came right out and said it.

"Yes, for you see I am a vampire."

"…………………………….Uh…." Claire backed away. "Right… you just… go that way and I'll go in here…" She tried the knob for the S.T.A.R.S office door hastily, clearly unnerved by his confession.

"Dear, dear you freaked her out." Commented William. "You shouldn't be so forward with a lady."

Kain lost all patience with the fucking man. "Will-You-Shut-Up?"

"Who're you talking to!" Claire yelled. "You're not making any sense!" She was obviously frightened again by now, and there was nothing Kain could do or say to explain away what he had just said. He didn't stop her from hastily fleeing into the S.T.A.R.S office, simply because he wished to be rid of her awkward self. Now he had enlisted her help, so to speak, locating William's daughter should be a doddle.

"I wouldn't want anyone else looking for my little Sherry." Commented William; still irritatingly there and guessing on what was going through Kain's mind. He was a pretty good guesser…

"What say you if my intensions are not wholesome?"

"I hope by 'unwholesome' you mean 'violent'." William commented, partially joking yet he continued on a more serious note. "But I sense you wont hurt her, just as you didn't hurt that Claire Redfield when she shot you through the arm."

"She did not 'shoot me through the arm.'" Kain growled angrily. "The bone stopped the projectile."

William laughed. "Same difference! She shot you and you didn't do anything about it! I'm really impressed at this new level of self-control you've achieved, Kain! When we were gaining battle data, one of the main thing we noticed about you was your lack of restraint; how you unwaveringly tore into some of the most staggering monsters Nosgoth had to offer and won, yet! You were all bio weapon, Kain. I spoke with Mortanius about how he created you to destroy human life, how he selected a man so mentally tainted it would make him unstoppable, and the practice he performed on you was not very unlike what we did with our Tyrant and our Nemesis project!" William laughed the depraved laugh of a mad scientist and it was at times like this that Kain was reminded just how outstandingly different from humans this … being truly was. "It was so quaint to envision it all, Kain. A humble little Necromancer performing this… incredible genetic modification with his little spells or whatever it was he did exactly. It was… beautiful to think that such a scientifically primitive culture had compensated with this 'magic like force'. It was treated like a science – it was delicious to watch Mortanius at work!"

Listening to the scientist go on and on, Kain realised that William had 'opened a gate' so to speak, and was ripe for plumbing for answers and information as to what Umbrella's agendas really were. They hadn't contained it in any documents for fear of accidentally leaking the classified information that Nosgoth even existed. He could tell him everything when he was like this. It was just a matter of pushing the right buttons…

William chose his words carefully. "What precisely did Mortanius show you?" He asked, giving William incentive to continue.

"He supplied us with a sample of 100 pure vampire DNA in the form of a blood sample belonging to a long dead ancient named Janos Audron."

"DNA?"

William smiled. "Deoxyribonucleic acid. All living things have a set of unique instructions contained within their cells that act as blueprints for a life form, be it plant or man. We were very grateful for the sample, but Mortanius said he couldn't supply us with the heart from which he got the sample, something to do with preserving history, and he couldn't, or wouldn't, provide us with a living human born vampire. He seemed powerful enough to secure one… Anyway Moebius was more than happy to help us choose from a selection of common vampires he'd rounded up, but after a while he saw that our interests were in a powerful human born specimen. First thing, he gave us an apparently notorious sample he called 'Vorador', that he said had murdered all but three of the previous Circle Guardians but after pitting him against one or two of our bio weapons we could see that personal tragedy had caused him to become a little long in the tooth, and besides, his DNA was in an advanced stage of being rewritten. We wanted something fresh, yet powerful. Something that was at an early stage of this long process. He gave us you, Kain."

Kain felt his blood boil at how he described the abduction and torture of his fellow vampires with such in cold and indifferent manner. This human utterly was nauseating. Kain suppressed his will to protest and let him continue. He had yet to discoverer Umbrella's intentions for him and had to endure more of William's disgusting tales to get at the truth.

"Kain, you have no idea just how confusing a monster you are." William smiled, folding white lab coat clad arms. "You see, Chimpanzees are insentient monkeys and yet they share something like 97 or 98 of their DNA with humans, making only about 2 of their codes being different information. You, therefore, are practically indistinguishable from a human in similar elements and the genetic difference is into minute decimals. However we've discovered there is something in the cells of 'sired' vampires that rewrites their DNA over an incredibly long period of time. It's similar to Alexia's stolen research notes I'm sure you read through, where she planned to rewrite her DNA with the T-Veronica over a period of years. The vampire process is so complex that it takes… well; we haven't yet found a human who has become 100 vampire yet! It's also reminiscent to the process that happened to my deceased mentor James Marcus with his leeches and the T-virus. It too rewrote his DNA, but because he was released and still being altered when he decided to make his prescience known, he could be destroyed by sunlight! Fledgling 'sired' vampires undergo a similar vulnerability for a number of years after infection, just like our bio weapons! Because of the vast number of similarities we deduced that we could begin a process… Alexia took the remnants of an ancient virus from the queen ant and implanted it into the mother virus to created T-Veronica, and we hoped to do a similar thing, finding the gene in the vampire genome that provides the instructions to make vampires and implant it within a virus, thus synthesising our own vampire-producing technology."

"Is that all of it?" Kain darkly grumbled, fascinated as well as appalled by William's info.

"Of course it isn't – If it was then we would have been perfectly happy with just the blood sample. We wanted you because the accumulate results our combat data showed that you were easily capable of taking out our Tyrant-002 without the aid of weapons. You… were far more powerful than something that could be produced by the T-virus and that was incredible to us! All the money and research that had gone into discovering and creating it and all the while you were running around Nosgoth for God knows how many years as the perfect combat ready killing machine! When I was told this, I didn't believe it because it was so ridiculous that something this incredible could escape our attention, but after seeing the devastation that one Fire Demon left in its wake when it destroyed our first base camp, and then learning that it was nothing compared to what you had faced and defeated, well, from that moment on…" William's bright eyes glazed over in a look of creamy, preoccupied pleasure, scientific pleasure, one might add, but Williams dangerously lustful gaze into space told of a scientific love that left Kain feeling even more dirty, violated and uncomfortable than ever before. "…I knew I had to have you, Kain…."

Kain suddenly decided that he'd have to find his answers at a later time as his cold marble skin began to craw at the insinuation in Birkin's whole manner. He would no doubt encounter William later on in his quest; he would not lose anything from letting the sick freak go now to cool down for a while.

"I do not belong to you or anyone, mortal." Kain spat, his harsh and uncompromising words serving to snap William out of his vaguely lustful trance. "I am my own man, I uncover my own answers and I follow my own path, not the path that you or John has intended for me to follow."

"John intends to help you get back to Nosgoth with your life intact, Kain." Confessed William, now quite angry at Kain's impudence. "He also believe that of all men, you could be the one who shuts down Umbrella and all the ruthless bio weapon companies that scourge the face of this world."

"I care not for Umbrella." Kain then continued on his way through the murky passage, past the shredded remnants of what had been his identical copy and over to the wood door exiting the corridor. "When I have escaped this city I shall escape this world without stopping to pick up the pieces left by you disgusting humans fraternisations with the sinister forces of science."


	7. Part7: Sherry Mission 1

Sherry was standing in an underground passage in the R.P.D with nowhere to go and nothing to do. She had search high and low and had yet to find anything that could be of possible use to her. The wind howled coldly from some outside place she could see and brushed tenderly against her face, making the emptiness in her heart feel even more apparent.

Shortly after her encounter with Kain, she ran into a spot of bother in the form of one of those messed up zombies. It was in a very bad way, the maggots wriggling in it's face causing her skin to crawl and her hair stand on end, but she was on the move from another dead end shaft and the only way she could go was beyond it. It's mindlessly gnawing mouth was already envisioning her young flesh between its jagged teeth, she would stand a chance it dodging past it; it would imprison her with its cold steely grip and tear into her before she realised she had been captured. She had seen it happen; zombies were deadly at close range.

Thinking She had no choice but to fight and run, something happened that she did not expect. Someone else rounded the corner. She didn't see it very well, her heart racing and her head full of dizzy terror, but they looked like they were wearing red… But she couldn't be sure. She was so drunk on panic that she wasn't even sure if she cried to the person for help. She thought she did, but her heart was screaming so many things at once that she honestly wasn't very sure.

She had escaped back into the duct from whence she came, which ended in a dead end; a small little display room behind Chief Irons' office and there she hit for what felt like hours, still shivering all over from just how close she had once again come. Cold tears were running down her face, and yet she didn't feel like crying, but that her very soul was bleeding salty aqua from her deep blue eyes.

She got up, and moved cautiously around that dingy little room for a few moments, past the fireplace, and just before she left the back area of the storage room, she came across a small, neat little Diary on a desk next to a bright banner of the Raccoon City P.D logo that either wasn't there when she was in that room last, or she has simply not noticed the first time around. After quickly checking the trophy room for hostiles, she dared to pick the Diary up to read. She didn't want any nasty surprises while engrossed in reading. She gently move it from the dusty desktop and shivered when she saw that it was absolutely dust free, a clear indication that it had only recently been placed it the dusty old room, and as a precaution, she snuck back into the opening of the duct (behind the suits of armour in the corner of the trophy storage room) but poked herself out from it just enough so that some of the dull, dusty light caressed the thick pages of the diary. If someone came in now, she could shoot back into the duct for safety. It may be a dead end, but it was better than having no escape in the fireplace part of the room from a zombie, or a monster or a crazy person, the kind that would take and hide a diary in just such a isolated place.

But thinking about what kind of person would put the diary here, she realised that Chief Irons was most likely the person to hide it in a room beyond his office. If anyone other than herself had found it, they would have to pass through his office to get to it. This meant that he could still be alive, but Sherry didn't rush to go and check. Irons was creepy even before the zombies attacked. She felt sick when she envisioned just what the insanity would make of an already eerie man like him.

She swallowed hard, the sound very loud in her ears, and she felt as though it would give her away to whoever lay the diary to rest here. She just hopped her bad feelings about looking through this was just part of the bad feelings that had been festering in her ever since she saw that first zombie man in the park. Yet… though the rational part of herself told her that it was dumb, the things going through her head, that this was not placed here by some creepy psycho killer trying to hide evidence, she could not control the feelings of excitement and terror as she opened the first page up, clicking open the pop-button leather cover and starting to read the words. She felt like a spy behind enemy lines, but she knew not to be so childishly naïve about this. If this was what she feared, then reading these words could put her in danger not only from zombies, but from people too.

The smell of the pages were new, and the ink… Sherry shivered to comprehend that this dairies last entry was not long ago, but as she read, her heart began to turn to a horrible viscous liquid that burbled up into her through and threatened to choke her.

April 6th  
I accidentally moved one of the stone statues on the second floor when I leaned against it. When the chief found out about it, he was furious. I swear the guy nearly bit my head off, screaming at me never to touch the statue again. If it's that important, maybe they shouldn't have put it out in the open like that...

Sherry had been past those statues! When she raced from Kain, up the stairs to the second floor, a corridor with three statues, one holding a beautiful stone, was the first she raced through. Beyond that was the corridor that held the entrance to the S.T.A.R.S office. Sherry felt scared that she knew the place this person was talking about, and even more scared that it was Chief Irons that yelled at the author. Now, this diary lay in a place accessible only by Chief Irons. He had done something, something terrible, just like Sherry had suspected. She braced herself, and continued to read.

April 7th  
I heard that all the art pieces from the chief's collection are rare items, literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't know which is the bigger mystery: where he finds these tacky things, or where he's getting the money to pay for them.

Certainly not on cop pay. Sherry's Daddy often banged on and on about how underpaid the R.P.D staff was, and how it didn't give them enough incentive to do their job properly. Once Sherry bothered to hold a conversation with him, she thinks she said something like 'is that why they still haven't found those cannibal murderous?' and her father fell as quiet and as pail as a ghost. He then told her to go to her room. It was totally unfair.

May 10th

I wasn't surprised to see the chief come in today with yet another large picture frame in his hands. This time it was a really disturbing painting depicting a nude person being hanged. I was appalled by the expression on the chief's face as he leered at that painting. Why anyone would consider something like that to be a work of art is beyond my comprehension...

Though picturing the disturbingly vivid scene sickened Sherry to the point that she almost gagged, she wasn't too surprised that Irons was turned on by that kind of thing. He was very, very sick and screwy. Her Daddy was sort-of friends with him, at least he told her that they had a professional business relationship and Irons was convinced her Daddy looked up to him. Anyhow, what her Daddy told her was that Irons defiantly showed signs of necrophilia but she always though he was just messing around. He said many bad things about Chief Irons to her. Stuff like 'podgy fat prick' and 'stupid filthy fucking slime-ball' were among his favourites. He would always make sure Mommy wasn't listening when he said these things in front of her, though. He got caught once. Very entertaining.

June 8th  
As I was straightening up the chief's room, he burst through the door with a furious look on his face. It's only been 2 months since I've started working here, but that's the second time I've seen him like this. The last time was when I bumped into that statue, only this time he looked even more agitated than ever. I serious thought for a moment that he was going to hurt me.

His office… THE office that was only just down the corner from her… Something was in there…. This building held secrets… Sherry felt tingly with fear and excitement as she unlocked this forbidden information, but what if Irons found out she was reading this? She couldn't think straight with her horror and exhilaration, so instead she just read.

June 15th  
I finally discovered what the chief has been hiding all along... If he finds out that I know, my life will be in serious danger. It's getting late already. I'm just going to have to take this a day at a time...

She was dumbstruck by what she just read. So there was something hidden in this building… She turned the page to find out what the writer did, how they got away, how they hid what they had done-

- But the next page was blank and she felt something inside her heart snap. She turned the page again, hoping that they had missed a page by accident like she was always doing in her diary, but that page was blank too. Now filled with a new kind or terror, she flicked through the leaves of the book with mounting terror and saw not one mark on them, not ONE mark.

With a shriek she tossed the book from her ands and it banged against the hard wooden floor beyond the suits of armour, a plume of dust rising up from its impact. She regretted reading it, she regretted being such a nosey little bitch that she couldn't just have put it down and stop learning it before she learnt too much of disgusting truth. Read it though was like a snowball running uncontrollably down a cliff, getting larger and larger and harder to stop, and that was just what had happened to her, the danger building and building with each fact she learnt until her curiosity was too great and powerful to stop, then abruptly, her path ended and she realised she had read too much. She cried, but plucked up the courage to climb out of the safe haven when she realised Irons could come back for the book. If he found it on the floor, then he would KNOW that someone had read it. The only entrance being the duct, he would do something about it, blocking it up or maybe even filling it with toxic gasses!

Well… the toxic gasses thing was a little overboard, but he'd know all the same about her, and it would only be a matter of time before he hunted her down….

She carefully picked up the book from the floor and tried to cover over the disturbed layer of dust by brushing at it with her hands, only to disturb a greater area of dust and make it more obvious. On realising she was making matters far worse, she felt her throat tighten and it become more difficult to breathe for her from the sheer anxiety. Quickly, she dashed over to the table and slammed the book down on its surface, causing dust to fly about and up into her face in a large choking plume of suffocating dead skin. It flew into her mouth and deep down into her lungs, scratching and tickling at them, daring, FORCING her to cough.

She spluttered for several seconds, then cough, and cough loud. Her eyes were weepy and streaming, her mouth over-salivating to get rid of the itch, her wet spluttering sprayed dust covered globules onto the previously unspoilt dust caped wooden floor. It was then that her irrational self had taken all it could, and in mindless panic induced panic, she ran. As quickly as a fleeing, frightened little animal, she raced from that back room, through the trophy room, and slammed open the door. She had to get out, she wanted to get out more than she wanted to breathe, more than she wanted to be happy, more than anything she ever wanted in her entire life. She wanted to scream and cry and rip out her hair, she wanted to beat her fists hard down on the earth and tear out her very soul itself, but first, she had to get away. It was the only desire in her whole being. She raced down the corridor, came to a turn, and felt her heart fill with terror at the sudden thing she saw at the end of the corridor. It was a tiger! She screeched and threw her arms up in protection, but then suddenly became aware that her voice was the only one in the impeccably narrow corridor. No roars, no heavy, clawing footsteps. Slowly, the courage to lower her arms filled her as the mindless fright leaked out of her in the disturbingly silent corridor. The tiger wasn't moving, frozen in an unmoving, artificial pose. It was stuffed.

Relief in the form of an all-consuming wave crashed into Sherry. There was no way she could resist it. She cried, falling to the floor on tired, dusty legs. She cried into her little pale hands. She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't take it, she just COULDN'T. She had cried so much in the past day but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop herself. She didn't want to cry anymore. She didn't want to be helpless, she didn't want to be alone anymore, and for a long, beautiful moment, she wanted Kain. He was powerful, so much more powerful than the zombies, than Chief Irons, and even the inside out men. If she were an adult, then it may have taken her a lot longer to realise what he was but right now, he was whom she wanted to be with. Raw power.

-Talking… Someone was talking in the next room… And the voices… One male - Chief Irons – and one female. Sherry immediately jumped to the conclusion that it must have been the woman who had written the diary, and that Chief Irons was about to do something bad to her, something terrible, and if she didn't do something about it quick then… then God only knows what would happen to her! She ran to the door-

-Then froze. What if the woman wasn't that diary person, and was a friend of Irons, someone who would want to hurt her just as much as Irons would? He Mommy was always telling her stories about women who assist in rape because it makes their boyfriend happy, and if this woman knew that sick bastard Irons' then chances were she was just as much into hung naked corpses as he was. Then again, if she was wrong, and the lady in Irons' office really needed help…

She didn't know what to do!

The voices stopped. For a moment, Sherry wondered if her ears had just given out on her, the silence deafening, painful to her little ears, which ached to be touched by the musical sound of voice. Did this mean he'd killed the lady?

She was answered by the sound of heavy footsteps moving toward that door Sherry was right next to, and at that instant she flew into a panic, racing back down the corridor from whence she came. She knew what had to have happened. Irons killed the lady and now he was coming for her because he knew she was there, touching his stuff and discovering his secrets. The footsteps behind her, round the corner from her now, sped up to match hers but she didn't stop, she ran so fast she felt like she couldn't breathe. She ran into the dingy trophy room, past the ventilation shaft behind the suits of armour, and into the fireplace room, shutting off the lights and squeezing into the furthest, darkest corner of the room. She wasn't crying now. She wasn't even filled with terror. She emptied her heart of all of the feelings that had been warring and fighting for supremacy inside her. Now that she was in real danger from something sentient, her attitudes towards the danger changed totally.

She drained her heart and squeezed herself into a tight ball, trying to become the darkness that enveloped her, absorbing it and making it her own to evade the… human being that stalked her. The footsteps slowed and ceased as they rounded the door to the fireplace room.

This was it. The moment that would decide the fate of absolutely everything for her.

The person, by what she could tell from ear, moved unhurriedly across the narrow room to the desk, to the diary she replaced on the side, and Sherry began to feel fear leak back into her organs. It was Irons! It HAD to be! He had seen that the diary had moved and now he was sure that someone was in here! She felt a lump in her throat. He wouldn't leave now, not without searching the room. She tried not to start crying again but it was hard, so very hard. She had a terrible sinking feeling inside her. She knew she was going to die. Irons would find her and do bad things to her just like her Mother was always telling her about.

Suddenly, everything burst into a painful, harsh, piercing white that stung her watery eyes. She gripped at them but the pain did not subside. Irons had switched the lights on; she was revealed and incapacitated. She wouldn't stand a chance…. All that was left for her was to flee.

She screamed and ran with the same kind of irrepressible, desperate will as she had done when she first fled from Kain, hoping that if she was too quick for him, too small and swift for him to trap, then she would have a chance of escape even in this tiny tomb of a room, but the clenching squeeze of a spindly, skeletal hand on her arm told her otherwise. It stopped her rapid movement abruptly, giving her a huge, body-wide whiplash and smashing her brain against her head. She felt its dead, heavy weight hit against the inside of her skull and it left her daze, but only for a split second.

"Let me go!" She squealed, struggling and writhing with all her tiny might, thrashing, scratching and even punching at the skeletal, ghostly arm had hold of hers.

"Easy, easy-there! I'm not a zombie!" –

-A female voice; a young woman. It was a young woman grasping at her arm and not Chief Irons. At that moment of realisation, everything changed. Terror instantaneously turned into relief as she realised she was finally released from solitude.

Opening her eyes, she saw her face in the light. She was a very pretty young lady with her hair tied behind her, and when she smiled down at Sherry with her blue eyes lighting up warmly, Sherry felt like she might cry again. She hugged the lady tightly, feeling more relief and sadness in one moment than she had done in her whole entire life. It was a wave of release so powerful that it threatened to rob her of her sanity just as much as her most intense horror had done. But Sherry's sense kicked back into practice as her exhilarating relief began to drain out of her fair soul. This wasn't the end. Infact, this was most likely the beginning of the true nightmare she would face. Sherry had fled from other adults before because she knew that to linger with them meant her death. They would try to take her to a safe place, but there was no place that was beyond the reach of the monsters that hounded her.

Sherry pushed away from the woman gently, so she wouldn't think she was trying to run away again, and looked her in the eye. She felt herself cringe at that look in the young woman's eye. Those eyes hadn't seen anything yet, whereas every time she closed her eyes, Sherry could still see the shimmering reds and blacks of tearing flesh and writhing maggoty skin. This lady didn't know what she was up against, and to go with her… it was just too dangerous!

She crouched down to meet her eye to eye, and Sherry resisted the urge to back away cautiously. It didn't make any sense, but she was still afraid of her. She wrapped her arms behind her back and stood with her face looking down, unsure if she could meet her eyes again and not feel sick at the thought of accompanying her. She didn't want to hurt her feelings, especially as she seemed such a nice lady…

"My name's Claire, what's yours?"

Sherry inwardly winced at the musical tone of her voice, She wasn't used to talking to people, let lone one as nice as her.

"Sherry..." She looked up at her as she spoke her name to make sure she heard, but dropped it right back down again out of embarrassment. Her soft face and warm gaze were unnerving.

"Do you know where your parents, are?"

Sherry felt her heart sink at the mention of her parents. She wished she knew for sure where they were…. But the last she heard from her mother was that shaky phone call. She'd spoken to her face to face even longer ago than that. She said she would be working late with her father. "They both work at the Umbrella Chemical plant near the city limits."

"The Chemical plant?" Claire frowned, not out of anger, but curiosity. "Then… what are you doing here?"

Sherry hated to have to go through it again… "My Mom called… and told me to go to the police station because it was… too dangerous to stay at home."

"From the look of things, I'd say she was probably right, but it's dangerous here as well." Claire smiled warmly, and Sherry froze up. She could feel what was coming next in her bones; the words she had been most dreading.

"You'd better come with me."

Sherry refused, shaking her head and stepping back, feeling strangled and trapped once more. She'd been in that place for long enough. It would be coming for her now, and it would be close and when it found Claire… Oh God, she wouldn't even be able to run from it. Even Claire looked frightened a bit now at Sherry's strangled expression.

"But there's something out there. I don't know what it is, but I saw it… Much bigger than any of those zombies, and it's coming after ME!"

And as if it had heard her, it screamed.

**_Gyraaaahh!_**

Claire jumped up, prepping her handgun in her right hand.

"That's what I was TELLING you about! It's here!" Sherry ran, she didn't care if the ventilation shaft led to a dead end, she'd find another way. She HAD to. The shaft kinked up and down at certain junctions; if she put some effort into it, she could escape to the basement levels and lead the fearsome monster far, far away; away from Claire.

"Sherry wait!"

It may already be too late… As Sherry escaped into the winding junctions of the R.P.D ventilation system, she silently preyed that she would find Claire again, and that the monster would not.

That had been anywhere from fifteen minuets to half an hour ago. This place she was alone in now was creepy. It was a dark, damp and chilling basement to the R.P.D, where in the R.P.D exactly, she didn't know. There were cold steel ladders at the end of the grey hall leading to a manhole in the ceiling. The floor was damp, dark smelling earth that gave slightly as Sherry stepped upon it, like hard sponge. Some of the walls had a strange white plastic sheet draped across them. Sherry couldn't think of a reason why. She didn't touch them to find out if they concealed something either; Zombies could jump out from anywhere. They had an uncanny ability to somehow mask their presence… You know how one can almost feel the presence of someone in the same room as them; Zombies seemed to be unable to emulate that quality. She figured it was a psychological thing until she met Kain. If he WAS what he said he was… then so much more was possible than she could have ever dreamt.

With nothing to do, Sherry moved slowly over to the grey steel door, rubbing her tired face with her hand and feeling it come away grimy. When she checked it out, she had noticed another ventilation shaft concealed beneath a cluttered wooden desk and she had felt a sudden burst of anticipation at wondering what part of the building she would unlock from exploring it. She'd decided to finish her exploration of the corridor first, in case she discovered any hostiles or maybe even an exit. She had uncovered neither, only a dead end and a pile of construction items.

She decided she would crawl back into the cold ventilation shaft and when she was deep into the twisting tunnels, she would go back to sleep. Maybe when she woke up, things would be a lot better. Whenever she got really sick, her mother and father would tuck her gently into bed and tell her to go to sleep. Nearly every time she did this, she woke up and everything was perfect and back to normal again. If she slept, then maybe when she woke up the army would be here.

She unhurriedly grasped the chilly, dirty metal of the doorknob with her little hand with such a weak grip that it frightened her how drained she had become. Her head sagged and she felt her eyes become cloudy with tears yet again. She had begun to wonder what had happened to her parents and then slowly she stopped wondering. They were both probably… probably… -

-"Sherry!"

Her head snapped up at the mention of her name, and her eyes were wide. She was familiar with that voice. VERY familiar.

"Sherry? H… Help…"

"Oh my God!" Escaped from her lips involuntarily. The distant voice, laced with pain and fear, was her fathers!

"Daddy? Are you okay!" She looked around for where the voice was coming from as he spoke;

"Sherry? Is that you honey?"

"Yes!" She nodded to herself, chasing the sound down the corridor to the dead end.

"Sherry honey, I'm scared! Please, you have to help me!" The voice was coming through a hole in a wire mesh, high up on a wall. Sherry knew what she had to do. Her father was on the other side of that, maybe being attacked by the monsters, and she was the only one who could save him. Taking some of the construction beams, she lined one board up with the hole making a ramp, and prepared to climb-

-"Sherry!" Another voice, only this one was much closer, and belonged to Claire. She froze. Sherry knew she would try to talk her out of it.

"Sherry where are you going? Don't run from me, don't you trust me?"

Sherry didn't turn back. "It's not that Claire, it's because of my daddy. He's over there, I heard him call my name!" Sherry started to panic, but still didn't return to Claire, who was approaching her too quickly for her liking. She was going to try and stop her, and Sherry couldn't let that happen. She squeezed into the hole.

"Sherry!" Claire yelled again as she disappeared beyond her reach.

" Daddy must have been attacked by the monsters! I HAVE to help him!"

"Wait Sherry don't go alone!" Claire was too late though. Sherry had fallen to the floor on the other side of the wall and had already begun looking for her father. "Sherry! SHERRY!"

The R.P.D basement was full of goods and delights, Kain discovered, if you knew where to look. Prizing open the already damaged door to the weapons storage room had been a cinch, and his reward was one of those sub-machine guns William had encountered and more ammo than he would need, what with his claws serving him well in close quarter combat with the undead zombies. Why the humans who broke into the weapons storage room prior to him left the sub-machine gun behind, he would never know but it would defiantly slow down some of the hardier enemies that stalked the corridors of the R.P.D.

Speaking of which…

Kain had discovered many an area where his wits had been required, his reward for two of them being two strange stones… and a blue fragment of a third one. Anyway, he found where those two red jewels were supposed to be used, and in that room he acquired a pink, diamond shaped key, which opened a door that held a heart shaped key, which opened a door to the basement area which no doubt must have the last key he needed. One complete stone was acquired from a strange puzzle in the library involving sliding shelves to match a picture on the wall, and the second whole piece… well, the circumstances in which he obtained that item were very unique.

The previous stone and the blue stone fragment he had found had been uncovered to him after he had solved a puzzle of some elaborate description, yet when he unlocked the door to what seemed to be some kind of interrogation room with the diamond key, the first thing his yellow eyes came to rest upon was the whole stone itself, lying on a shelf on the opposite side of the room. Kain did not enter the room before looking it over with his sharp optical sense, his chilling gaze travelling over a large mirror consuming one wall and a desk in the centre of the room on which rested a cable and an eerily half empty polystyrene cup of coffee. Whoever started that coffee, was killed before he could finished it… a definite sign of danger.

Entering slowly, Kain watched the reflective surface of the giant mirror with his deathlike white face creased in bewilderment. Certainly a peculiar place for such a large mirror… Another puzzle, perhaps?

He noticed this was very much the case and thought twice about taking the stone. It could trigger all manner of things if he wasn't sharp enough to spot the problem. Check over the tiled floor and then the ceiling, he saw nothing. He was looking for something like a button of a steel grate through which toxic gasses would be freed but there was nothing. He examined the stone and saw nothing was attached to it; no trip wires, no secret levers below it that would activate a giant blender… No freaky shit would happen if he took it. He relaxed now, and did just that. -

-And as if on cue, as if it was part of a trip-wire mechanism set up to catch off-guard thieves, the giant mirror exploded into a million pieces and a snarling fleshy ball of hatred fell to the floor with a heavy thump. It was another one of those damn tongue creatures with an exposed brain! It howled and then screamed and finally lunged at the still dumbstruck vampire. Kain kicked it away with his heavy boots and it smashed into the table and chairs.

That's when he saw him again.

William Birkin was comfortably sitting with his legs crossed in one of the gunmetal grey seats at the interrogation desk with a large smile on his sick features. The inside out creature Kain had placed his heavy metal boot in had been propelled into the chair William was sitting on, but because of his insubstantial form it fell straight though him, falling on the chair and almost instantly springing from it again at him. William applauded this sending daggers of hate slicing into Kain's heart but Kain ignored him. He had an idea…

Ripping one of the legs from the table, Kain preceded to beat the exposed lobe of the howling, spitting snarling beast into a bloody grey pulp.

"Oh, I'm very vulnerable there!" William joked in a comic voice as Kain delivered a blow on its exposed brain. Kain ignored him and brought down another shattering wet thud on its bare brain sending it convulsing to the floor. "There go the piano lessons!" William quipped, but in spite of the great impatience in Kain's heart for the man, he preceded to ignore the annoying mad scientist just as he had planned. He behaved as though William wasn't even there.

As Kain exited that room with the stone in his gore soaked claws, he caught sight of William out of the corner of his eye and boy was he pissed.

That had been about an hour ago, Kain had counted from the small wristwatch on one of the bodies in the morgue but his interest was piqued when he picked up the sound of yelling from somewhere in the R.P.D basement a moment ago. With his vampiric senses he could discern that though the sound was not very far, it was greatly muffled. Out of curiosity he followed the path the sound had come from and had found a grungy, poorly lit dirty little alley full of overflowing trash and at the end of it, an open manhole.

Inside the manhole was a filthy basement section, the damp soil serving as the floor plush beneath his sturdy boots and strange plastic sheets covering some of the walls. Following the path, he came to the source of the pleas.

Claire Redfield, the young woman whom had caused him much reason to complain earlier, was now on her knees on a ramp of wood, peering apparently desperately (though he was behind her, her actuations were laced with stressful worry) through a small hole in a wire fence.

Much stranger was William Birkin, standing next to the makeshift ramp on which Claire was knelt, peering nervously at her for any signs of progresses, fidgeting on the spot and playing roughly with his fingers. Claire could not see, hear of even sense he was there, so it was strange that he would waste his time manifesting himself to her in this way…

William noticed Kain before Claire did.

"Oh God, what have I done?" He said nervously to Kain.

"What is happening?"

Claire spun around at the sound of Kain's voice, but rather than question his prescience, she preceded to tell him.

"It's Sherry! She went though this hole because she thought she heard her father calling to her!"

Kain looked at William. "Did he?"

William unhappily nodded.

" I don't know if her father's really over there." Responded Claire to a question she believed was directed at her.

"But we HAVE to find her! He father wouldn't want her risking herself like this!"

"Damn right I wouldn't!" Answered William. "It called me back, the G-virus that now controls my body. That's where I am when I'm not with you Kain, and in some kind of pain induced confusion as I grew extra claws, I called out of help… I think I might have called her name… I'm not sure…. Anyhow, I wasn't in full control so it could have made me says ANYTHING to her!"

"Idiot." Muttered Kain under his breath and made his way to the ramp. "Get out of my way!" He barked to her.

Claire gave him a confused look as she slipped down the ramp and back onto her own two feet again. Her bright eyes showed that she could not work out what he was about to do.

"It's too small for an adult to enter." Claire told him. "I've been trying to widen the hole, but that wire's tough."

"I need not adjust the hole."

Even with his induced weakness, one of his most useful dark gifts had apparently endured the long slumber and scientific tests: Mist form.

Claire gasped as Kain swiftly and gently disintegrated into a gentle cloud of living mist. The mist had a bizarre movement about it compared to normal mist. It danced and swirled amidst itself in a most beautifully haunting but unnatural way and took on the rough shape of its previous humanoid form. Claire didn't know what to think when the man standing right next to her became dancing mist and seeped through the wire mesh hole. Claire was a very levelheaded person and sure, zombies were running around, but a grown man transforming to mere mist just simply wasn't possible! Little did she know that the father of the young girl she was so concerned for was standing right next to her in the damp hallway. Ironically, he himself was once a very levelheaded man but at some point in the last ten years, he had been slipping further and further into madness. He felt that soon, she would follow the path he took, too.

The haze of Kain's form soaked through the steel wires and solidified on the other side in a crouch. A sense of vertigo overcame him for a second but as Kain forced his eyes open, his sense of direction rejoined him.

"I am through." Kain told them. Claire didn't know how to respond for a moment and then answered;

"I'll wait here for you, but you must find and protect Sherry! Even if her father IS in trouble over there, she has no way to protect him!"

Kain unhurriedly moved over to the small red elevator in the corner of the room, his boots characteristically thumping heavily with each powerful step and seeing that the rust coating the controls of the small one-man lift had been disturbed very recently, felt that there was still hope for the little human child.

"If her father indeed is over here, then it will be Sherry whom requires protection."

Racing down the footpath in the open-air section of the sewage treatment facility, Sherry's blood ran cold when she felt something's icy dead eyes on her. She didn't stop to peer into one of the thick blocks of shadows cast by huge tanks that reached into the very sky, enveloping the walkway in an inky black death, but just kept running, sprinting to the end of the 'T' shaped walkway and going left to a closed steel door.

Once inside, she felt absorbed in relief again once realising the coast was clear; Extreme emotion seemed to be a side effect of the terror. Looking around, she saw she was in a strange room indeed; A deep drop in the centre of the room, like some kind of dirty, drained pool and three large, wooden boxes in that hole for apparently no good reason. On the other side of the hole was a shelf and on that shelf, something sparkled preciously. A key with a jewelled, green top in some kind of shape she couldn't make out. If she got that key at least, then maybe Claire wouldn't be so mad at her for running off to save her Daddy, who didn't seem to be anywhere around here after all. She preyed it was because he had escaped…

Directly in front of her was a small consol that intrigued her curiosity. Moving across the empty room to the panel, she could see it was some kind of device for controlling the level of water in that damp pit… it seemed fairly uncomplicated; there was an on and off switch and currently it was set to 'off'.

Sherry had a brainwave. If she stacked the boxes to one side of the room…-

- The door, the only entrance and exit to the room, clacked and squealed painfully open on old, unlubricate hinges. Sherry had spun around to meet the creature eye to eye even before the door had finished creaking open, yet the creature that had entered was there already.

"Kain!" Sherry squeaked and resisted the itching urge to run up and cuddle him. As much as she was overjoyed to see him again, he didn't look like the type to be fond of kids.

"Sherry Birkin." He responded upon seeing her, his emotions ever unreadable, or simply non-existent. He pointed at her with one long sharp black claw. "You are to accompany me back to your 'Claire' immediately. It is unsafe for a diminutive human child such as you to be astray at this time."

"Well yeah… But I'm NOT going back until I find my Daddy!"

"You are best off NOT finding your father, child." Kain said seriously. "He could pose a great threat to you in his current way."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Sherry yelled in her high voice. Where she got the courage to yell at such a frightening man, she didn't know. "We may not have known each other very well, but my Daddy loves me! I can't just leave him to die just because YOU think I'm too weak to take care of myself!" Kain marched toward her threateningly but she ran in the direction of the oversized concrete steps leading down into the pit containing three boxes. She hopped down each oversized step as quickly as she could, the recovery time after each jump painfully slowing down her decent to the bottom, but when she rose up from her crouch after landing on the bottom on the pit, Kain was already standing there right in front of her, waiting.

Sherry was shocked. "How did you…?"-

Kain stalked forward. "I jumped."

She staggered backwards, astonished, until she was abruptly stopped by one of the heavy wooden boxes. Backing into it gave her a little start and she yelped out in surprise.

"Child, you are causing me more bother than is wise. If you continue to elude me, I will take you by force. Do you understand?" He was getting pissed now.

After a moment, Sherry got her nerves back. If he truly were a monster like she guessed, then if he wanted to kill her he would have done it already. He was bluffing.

"I can take care of myself!" She barked.

He lost his temper, the savage look in his eyes seemingly exploding into rage. "You little brat!" And he clutched her arm tightly in his iron grip so fast that Sherry didn't even see the hand move until it was squeezing painfully at her wrist. "I may not desire the loss of your life but believe me mortal, when I say that I know of quite literally hundreds of ways to hurt to a human body without drawing even a drop of blood!"

A few painful moments passed. The echo of Kain's violent words concluded in the sewage disposal room, then an all-consuming silence enveloped them. The child peered at him with disheartened watery blue eyes that told a crushing tale of her woe. Her woe then turned to pain, and her pain turned to tears.

She started to cry. Loudly.

The sound of her noisy bawling echoed hugely in the empty little hole, cradling her gushing eyes with her free hand balled into a fist, her faces creased into pain. Still hold of her other arm, Kain at first felt angry that she would pull something like this; every monster in a 30-metre radius was going to hear this racket, he began to feel a another emotion sneak into a crack in his heart the longer her pain went on. He started to feel a little bad for hurting her in this way. She was only a little girl; she didn't know any better and now he'd yelled at her simply because he couldn't control HIS temper.

"Sherry…" He tried, looking around first as though to check no one was defiantly watching before he continued, placing his other hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry Sherry… I didn't mean to yell at you." She didn't stop crying. "You just… would not comply and I was forced to take more direct action…" His words weren't helping and Kain began to unwillingly comprehend that he would need to try something a little more intimate to get her to calm down. He gradually pulled her to him until he was holding the child against his chest in a hug. The crying little girl held him tightly once she got there, Kain letting go of her arm and she immediately threw her little arms around his waist (or as far around as she could get them), her head rested against his slowly pulsating, sculpted stomach. He shushed quietly at the child, feeling a flicker of embarrassment wriggle around inside his abdomen but swallowed heavily and tried to ignore it. He stroked her hair as softly as he was able, and when she had quietened down somewhat and peered in enchanted amazement up at him, he pasted on the least intimidating face he could muster.

Sherry sniffed the last of her tears down. " I don't know why I cried." She said in mild ashamed embarrassment, pushing herself away from him. "My parents used to yell at me a lot when I got in the way and I never cried then."

"Tonight is special." He commented, putting on the friendliest smile he could manage, but it was twisted to a great extent and appeared very disingenuous even to Sherry. She raised an eyebrow, and upon seeing that it wasn't working, Kain stopped trying to appear friendly. He had stopped her crying; He'd done his share of kindness. "I believe circumstances on this night are somewhat different." Kain continued. "We are all feeling emotions that we normally would not…" He didn't mean to give it away to her but he obviously meant that he had felt guilty enough to try and stop her from crying and that was not at all usual for him...

Feeling awkward now for causing him such bother, Sherry thought for an uncomfortable moment of how to reiterate her point without angering him again….

Before Kain came in, Sherry remembered having an idea on how to get to that key…

She clenched her hands enthusiastically and beamed determinedly up to Kain; "Kain, if I can prove to you that I'm not just some dumb kid, will you have a little more faith in me?"

Kain propped his fists onto his hips and raised an eyebrow, curious but amused slightly by her proposal.

"What do you have in mind?"

Sherry pointed one little finger to the other side of the deep pit where the key rested on an otherwise empty shelf.

"I'll get you that key using my wits! All you have to do is stay by the side of the pit and watch me work!"

Kain smirked and chuckled to himself lightly. That key was none other than the very one he needed to unlock the final remaining closed doors in the P.D.

"Very well." He said with mild, playful disdain as he moved over to the edge of the pit, uncoiling his fists until his arms hung by his sides. "If you can bring me the key, then I shall treat you with a tad more respect, child."

"My name is Sherry Birkin." She reminded him with contempt.

Kain snorted to himself with a sly, dark smile across his pale face, turning to face the discoloured, slimy wall of the deep hole. Then, in one graceful inhuman movement he sprang up more than three metres back onto the upper level of the sewage treatment room, before turning and waiting by the water control panel to see what Sherry had planned.

Shaking her head trying to free her from a daze, she didn't desire to show his abilities left her feeling a little rattled; it would be a sign of weakness. She had to redeem herself in his scowling, golden eyes after bursting into tears right in front of him like some pathetic trapped animal. As she executed her little theory, pushing the boxes up to one side of the pit, she began to think about Kain more. She so absolutely did not want him to believe she was helpless, albeit she wanted his protection. It reminded her of one of the annoying documentaries her father made her watch on TV. Wild animals in zoos seem to have a friendly pet-like relationship with their keepers, but one sign of weakness for even a second and they'll take them down. Her Daddy said that it was nothing personal, and that it was because they would see it as an opportunity to become leader of the pack and animals are always opportunists. Kain was a sentient being though. If he took an opportunity to hurt her now, then it would most certainly be personal.

The boxes were lined up in a row on the far wall of the sewage. She dusted the layer of grime from her hands and smiled in satisfaction. Turning up to Kain, she was delighted to see he was at least still watching her and hadn't wandered off, his gaze or otherwise.

"Are you finished?" Kain asked, trying (but not his hardest) not to sound so arrogantly impatient, however after years of practicing exactly the opposite, he couldn't hide it very well. However, had Kain seen into the tiny girls heart, then he may have been surprised to see she felt flattered that he was at least trying not to lose patience with her again. It reassured her in that he didn't believe it was her fault he got mad. Adults usually blamed the child for anything THEY did wrong and the child had the misfortune to get swept along with. It was really quite unbelievable that Kain hadn't killed her. It was chilling for her to comprehend what he could do to her before he killed her...

She forced that thought from her mind before it got out of hand. Climbing back up the giant steps to the ground level with Kain, she tried to convince herself that vampires were different from humans in such things. They'd been around a lot longer she guessed; they'd know better by now, right? -

- She pushed herself up on one of the cold stone steps, yet as she applied pressure to the dirty, slippery concrete, her fingers slid through green slime that rimmed the step and she lost all balance. What happened in the next split second took Sherry more than several of them to piece it all together through her startled shock.

She fell… then stopped abruptly and violently before she reached the cold sold floor… Her small eyes didn't open immediately; even now-clenched firmly closed, bracing for an impact that had been unnaturally delayed, but as she became aware of a strange pressure on her arm, she dared to open her eyes, just a little, to inspect what had happened.

Kain's pallid, clawed hand was firmly wrapped around her arm stopping her from falling. He'd been at the top of the chunky stairs literally a heartbeat ago and now he was before her, taking hold of her arm and barely centimetres from her. He moved faster than she could ever have anticipated…

"You should be more careful, child." The tone of mockery in Kain's voice was unmistakable as he lifted her up off her feet by her arm and carrying her to the top. "Slip in the wrong place and you will most certainly die."

The very moment Sherry's feet touched the floor again, she struggled free from his grasp, Kain making no attempt to hold her against her will. She turned furiously to him, but after a few moments of irritated scowling she apparently decided to let it drop.

Kain watched curiously with one folded across his chest and his other claw on his chin as she began to play with the water level control panel and a sudden snap of a steel switch filled the room. The, the hissing, rushing roar of racing water from somewhere deep below them crept in swiftly from the distance, becoming louder and louder until the roaring filled the pit below, razing the row of boxes Sherry had created up to their level. Even as the boxes rose, Kain chuckled when he noticed what Sherry's plan must have been; to use the floating boxes as a makeshift bridge to the other side of the room. He shook his head gently. It was a very clever idea for such a tiny human child but she hadn't planned for one thing…

Sherry dashed over to the boxes and placed her foot confidently on its surface-

-Finding it bob around beneath her foot in an unstable manner. Not letting this discourage her, Sherry cautiously climbed onto the first box, it jogging and ebbing around, now dangerously close to-

-And then it happened. Cringing, Kain covering his eyes with his hands as he heard the splash of Sherry Birkin plunging into the grimy water. The box had done a rotation in the water and had dumped its passenger into the semi-treated sewer waters beneath. Coughing and spluttering, Sherry swam painfully slow back to the floored stair area of the pit and dragged herself out, knelt on the floor in a dripping heap of disappointment.

"You could have pulled me out!" Sherry complained.

Kain shook his head. "A Vampire body is burnt by the touch of water as if by acid."

"That's holy water!"

Kain frowned. "No, it's water. How does holy water differ from any other water? It is still made of exactly the same chemicals."

"It's charged with the power of God or something." She told him, wringing out her clothing with more than a little irritated scowl on her face.

Kain laughed. "The Christian God would have given up on this world round about the time humans murdered his son. Would he truly allow such a hopelessly violent race such access to divine power? No, child. Water seems to have an eroding effect on vampires."

"What about sunlight and crosses and garlic and stuff?"

Kain snorted. "Sunlight turns fledglings into dust at its touch but I have developed somewhat of an immunity already. Though I am weaker during the day, I can still survive in direct sunlight. As for crosses and garlic, that is a load of petty accusations dreamt up by a cowardly race to demonise a people they know they are inferior to."

"You don't seem like much of a saint yourself." Sherry dared, her voice small and as unthreatening as she could. Her ignorance angered Kain, and stalking towards her tiny crouched form, he burned at her with wicked golden eyes.

"An eternity of persecution does that to a man."

A silence ensued as Kain, using his vampiric strength and speed he had demonstrated earlier, jumped across the water filled pit to the other side and casually collected the key himself, slipping it into one of his hip packs.

"Why the heck didn't you do that in the first place?" Asked a fuming Sherry.

"You said it yourself." Kain responded, jumping back to her so easily it made one wonder why humans were incapable of such movement. "You wanted to get that key to prove yourself to me. And you failed."

"If I hadn't fallen off then I would have got it!" She yelled.

Kain Chuckled softly. "You may as well have said 'if I hadn't failed, I would have got it'. You didn't get the key, Sherry. If you cannot even achieve something as simple as that then what hope have you for finding your father?"

"Simple for YOU maybe! I'm finding my father and nothing you say can changed that!"

Biting his lower lip just for a second, Kain unwillingly accepted the fact that this was a true statement. He shuddered to think that the G-virus monster William had become had used William's voice to lure her to it. She wasn't safe alone yet if she was so dead set on finding her father, then that meant she would be attempting to dash off at every available opportunity and although Kain had proven himself to be faster and stronger than her, all she needed was a conveniently placed hole to escape and squeeze into and she would be beyond his reach and protection. He could not expect her to stay with him, even now yet without him, she would perish…

"I don't care what you have to say!" Continued Sherry, breaking Kain from his thought. "I can't come with you just yet; my father is around here somewhere and I HAVE to find him!"

"Is this what you want?" Kain asked softly. A far cry from the violent outburst of emotion at her defiance that Sherry expected. Armed with the final precinct key, Kain now had access to the final locked doors in the R.P.D building and believed his search would be hindered with a child tagging along. She too needed to perform a search of her own and was not going to yield; William Birkin may have been the immoral diversion of human nature that damned him to this torment, but he was still father to this cute little girl and the love between them was apparent from their legitimate concern for one another, rather than each being cross at the other for leaving them behind. He would get a chance to protect her but that time was not now. Right now, she needed to find her father and learn the true meaning of the fight for survival, rather than hiding away in the ducts like some powerless fluffy animal.

After Sherry nodded in answer to his uncertain question, Kain removed William's handgun from one of many straps on his belt and handed it to her. Eyes wide in disbelief, Sherry cautiously took up the deadly black metal object, gasping slightly at its heaviness as it pulled down her hand somewhat.

He unstraped and handed her the side-pack he had found in the weapons storage locker, full of ammunition and gave her instructions on how to use the weapon.

"When the slide is back, it means it's empty. When you reload, the slide catch is hit and it will move forwards, showing you that you have done it properly. Hold it as rigidly as you can with both hands; even a gun like this can easily buck out of your hands, child, so be very careful."

"Wait… What are you doing?" Sherry asked, holding the weapon that had previously belonged to her father in her tiny hands. "You just go around give little kids guns?"

"If you wish to search for your father, then you cannot go unarmed." Kain reasoned. "And I am also assuming that though you may only have been on this earth for a mere twelve years, child, you are not psychologically deficient enough to fire that weapon at yourself."

"What if I shoot someone else?"

"Then be it on your soul rest, child. Surely the thought of taking a life will be enough to ensure your care?"

Sherry swallowed hard. He trusted her enough to give her a gun! …Or maybe it was that he was far more aware of the seriousness of the situation that he was able to overcome such humanly immoral ideas as little kids with guns. In a town like Raccoon, who cares if it's sick to give a kid a gun? It's even sicker to deny them one when it could be the only thing between them and death.

Kain led Sherry out of the water filled room and into the walkway beneath the starts and, after testing the weapon by firing a thunderous shot into the night sky, he was satisfied she knew everything she could to defend herself in Raccoon city. She had the common sense to run from danger when she was outnumbered; she had a good chance of surviving alone for now, and as they parted ways, Kain silently wished her luck. She may have been twelve, but she understood what to do; why should he worry?

Entering back to the tunnel with the wire net hole he had used mist form to infiltrate, Kain begun to decide just how disappointed he should sound when he told Claire and William that he could not find Sherry Birkin.

The monster hollowly and wordlessly observed the small child and the pale man part ways from its vantage point on top of one of the enormous water tanks overshadowing the area. When the two life forms had disappeared, the creature opened its soft black lips steadily and moved its damp tongue behind its sharp teeth, breathing warm damp air through them all. The sound it had been trying to emulate did not leave its lips as it had done before and it grew impatient. Why was it so hard to do this? The strange life forms that littered this world all made such odd music through their soft pink lips. It was a tremendous mixture of melodies that lasted from dawn until dusk that they all made so surprisingly effortlessly. If it was like them, why was it finding it so hard?

When it first awoke in the deep, hidden places of this world, it saw something it would never, ever forget. At the time, it did not know what the strange, astonishing and beautiful creature was gazing back at him from the outside with its glassy eyes. It stared in amazement at it as it awoke, the spongy lips of its mouth parting to reveal what it would later recognise as teeth and damp tongue. Then, it decided that it should be outside it this strange thing and broke free from the cushioning gluey liquid and the cutting glass all around it. The creature clothed in white did not seem to be what it would later recognise as 'frightened', and instead it made the music from its mouth. It would never forget the sound of that music. So deep and rumbling, like thunder from the heavens, then it too opened its mouth and made the music, howling at the blue eyed creature with its own song, but the creature did not understand its music and it seemed to make it more wary of it.

It turned back to the womb of glass and cables it had burst free from and saw another next to it still holding another one of those animals, only this one with a pale colour. There was much more of the strange fur that grew from the top of its head than there was with the animal before it, and it was a different colour, too. As silver as the rays of the moon... -

-Then, it became aware of the colour of its own fur, and it matched the creature still in the glass womb. It traced over its whole body with its own eyes and found that the creature still in the womb was identical to it in every way. Why? It turned to the creature in the white cloth and now its powerful blue eyes were fill with a new, strange emotion that even now it cannot work out. It was not afraid of it, it was not sad, it was not happy… but it made the music again from its mouth and it did not take on such a pleasing quality to the ear.

It remembered back to when it first awoke and is hissed angrily. There was so much about these strange creatures that it did not know then. The beautiful creature with the voice of gentle thunder had been a male; it understood that much. It too was a male. The opposite of 'male' was 'female' and they differed in a variety of ways. Females were far louder before it made them stop working, for one, and males tend to fight back much more. It remembered the first creature it made stop working; a female child. It did not do it on purpose with her, however. Not like now. It wanted to see the inside of that child, and it was indeed a beautiful sight, but for a long while it wondered if it was really worth making the child stop working. The creatures were boring when they stopped working; they no longer made the music it enjoyed to hear and would take on a limp stance, becoming no different from an object. It later discovered that the red juice that poured from the creatures like water from a tap was indeed very delicious and had taken well to opening up the creatures to get at the juice inside. They made a very different kind of music when it did this: An awfully nasty song that would alert the other creatures it its prescience. It tried to get to the juice without causing them to make the horrid song, but they never relented in their hymn right up until they shut down.

The land had been engulfed by a different kind of creature recently, however. This kind had terrible tasting juice and ate the bodies of the creatures it fed on, making them bad for its health. It had listened into the songs of the creatures as they fell and heard a number of lyrics that always remained the same;' Zombies' and 'Monsters'. It guessed that this was what they must have been.

It followed the carnage all the way to this one building it was hiding in and it was here that it heard songs that it never thought it would hear again. One was a howl of a monster that sounded distorted, but could only have belonged to the beautiful man-creature in the godly white robes that it had witnessed at its awakening (this creature had also been responsible for putting him back inside the glass womb until the zombie-monsters took over, before it escaped again) and the second was even more astounding. It was ITS own song, the song it cried when it first burst free of the womb, only this time it was sung from the lips of another. Following the songs, it came across two animals; a child that had the same scent as the robed god and the thing it had seen in the second glass womb, the one that had been identical to it. The two creatures made the music to each other quite a lot and while it had been attending, it had learnt the lyrics they used to refer to each other. Its twin was called 'Kain' and the small, delicate was called 'Sherry' and as it watched them disappear from its view, it felt a ravenous pang within its chest. It had fed much since its awakening, so it was not thirst for the crimson substance it hungered for, so what was it?

It sat, impatiently trying to emulate the name of the child with its inexperienced lips, only a raspy wail leaving them, when suddenly it realised that it did not have a name, a song that was its own but turning to the black marks of language tattooed onto the right side of its chest, it saw its own name, or its serial number, as it would more appropriately be called.

Had it been able to read the language of the beings it fed upon, it would have read 'gamma'


	8. Part8: Ada & Leon

William still wasn't quite used to it; willing his hand through the steel bars of the dog kennel pen and back through again. Sometimes as he did it, he'd mess it up and find his had stuck through the bars, a moment of nervous tugging before he got his composure back again and he was able to slide his wrist back through the bars. Practice makes perfect, and he seemed to posses an unusually large amount of curious power for a mere mortal spirit… but then again, he wasn't technically dead yet… the power of his physical body had seemed to have an arcane effect on his soul… but when he DID finally die, would he retain the power? He hadn't yet tried applying his mysterious powers to a physical object such as people, yet hadn't really found anyone to practice on, so here he was, phasing his pale cream coloured hand in and out of the bars. He was so bored! The Doberman police dog, now zombiefied, rested unmoving in the cell. He was profoundly irritated by its completely oblivious nature towards him; if it had been a living dog, it would have been howling and starling, hairs on end and terrified beyond sane belief, but zombification seemed to dull a creatures sensitivity to even basic ethereal sensations, relying purely on its scientific-based senses like smell, sight and sound to track its prey.

William released a deeply bored sigh in an angry overly-heavily huff and moved to punch at the steel doors, but his fist sifted through the object and he ended up losing all balance, falling to the floor with a painful thump.

"Oh God damn it!" He yelled on the floor in angry pain. The instinctive shock of falling and the momentary fear of hitting solid ground was what had resulted in him unintentionally willing himself to feel the impact. It was bullshit, that he could pass through steel bars but hit the floor afterwards. It was as if someone was mocking him.

William, still on the floor lying next to the zombie dog, folded his arms in brooding annoyance. Oh, Kain would have loved to see him struggle to use his powers like this: A remarkable, intelligent _HUMAN_ mad genius wound up by his own inexperience with forces Kain, a VAMPIRE, had been living with for quiet easily hundreds and hundreds of years. God damn it all – he may have physically been perfect in every way but Kain was about the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, egotistical, arrogant, prejudice-

- William's eyes almost popped out of his head. Kain was prejudice! William ran down the mental list of Kain's flaws and found only that one that was the root of all his evil nature and MOST IRONICALLY, it was the principal passion of what tied down human nature to the cavemen they evolved from. William chuckled; it was the last remaining thread that kept Kain really human and it was something that Kain no doubt believed didn't fall into the category of 'humanity'. When one is presented with the word 'humanity', images of sugar and spice and all things soppy enter ones mind, but humanity does have its negative aspects, just like everything else. Prejudice was the one emotion all humans possessed, a truly human aspect, and Kain was capable of it. He had a lot of evolving to go until he realised that, William sensed.

Sitting up, William willed himself through the bars of the dog pen without accidentally head butting them right at the last moment like he had expected: A nice, clean phase-through with no hitches whatsoever. He was getting better at it! Smiling happily, William dusted non-existent grime from his lab coat with a playful smile on his dark yet fair features-

- And he noticed he was not alone anymore. Five men and one woman stood before him at the opposite end of the kennel room and William's blood ran cold when he instantly recognised the lab coats they were clothed in. All watching him with sombre expressions of their faces, William began to feel his through tighten with anxiety when he sensed they were… not of flesh, was the only what he could describe it. They were spirits, fully dead beings, unlike him, who was simply a soul wondering free from its flesh while the G-virus took absolute control.

"William Birkin." Said one, and William instantly cringed when he recognised the voice, then the appearance of the man.

It was John Howe, his favourite researcher at the Arklay facility. A pretty blonde man with blue eyes, John reminded William of the kind of good men that still existed out there in the world, even in places as unusual as a bioweapons facility. Looking at the others, he could see they were all the researchers that had died at the Spencer Estate:

On to John's left was quiet possibly the only true friend he had; Bill Rabbitson, with his large fuzzy hair tired back with a polka dot bandanna, his face that was always bathed in a kind of youthful glee now unnaturally sorrowful and laced with despicable rage bubbling below the surface. If William remembered correctly, Rabbitson had not died of the T-virus, and instead had been shot dead by a member of security while trying to escape the Mansion to report the incident to a friend he knew working for the S.T.A.R.S alpha team.

Behind and to the right of Rabbitson where the two pricks Henry Sarton and Steve Keller. They thought of themselves as 'players', when really they were just going through an eternal mid-life crisis. Apart from each other, they were great scientists, but having them together was like putting two notorious misbehaving children next to each other in a seating plan at school. They obviously still believed they were in the schoolyard.

William remembered that his associate Albert Wesker (who became S.T.A.R.S Alpha team leader before the mansion incident) hadn't gotten on very well with the man, for reasons he never seriously fleshed out other than with occasional sarcastic remarks behind his back involving the size of his ego compared to the size of his manhood. He never understood why he hated him so much…

On John's right were two of the Arklay employees he didn't know as well as he really should have; Ellen Smith and Michael Dees. Ellen Smith was a long legged platinum blonde with a reputation of being a high riding bitch who didn't associated with those lower than her on the ladder. Again, Wesker detested this woman, and William had observed why on several occasions. He had asked her out once or twice and she had turned him down but hadn't even attempted to be nice about it. When Wesker called her Ellen, she would respond with a cold line like 'I am your superior and a doctor and so I should be addressed as such.' She was an icy bitch but she and William never really clashed. They both handled themselves pretty professionally when addressing each other so there was never any reason for upset.

Standing next to (but also hiding behind) Ellen was Michael Dees, the man William recalled was responsible for hiding all the puzzle locks in the mansion in places he said 'only Spencer could find them'. He had lasted longer than most against the infection but Umbrella, once he had served his purpose, let him die with the others. They didn't want to risk a further outbreak.

William recalled many interactions with him yet received no real insight into his personality. It was no secret that he was a shy and quirky man. He took care of the specimens (including maintenance on Kain and his tank when he arrived at Arklay a year or two back) and so William ended up having all kinds of convocations with him on specimen nutrition and keeping them interested through their feeding. (Like the strange ball toys filled with food an owner would give to their pet dog to keep it entertained) Yet… he didn't know him at all well…

But William supposed it didn't really matter now. They didn't look very pleased with him. Any past friendships meant nothing now.

"John Howe." Responded William, his face sinking back into his ever unreadable emotionless, despite feeling rattled inside. "Kain told me he had seen you. I must admit I am impressed that even in the afterlife you do not relent in your ambition for answers."

-"This isn't about answers, Doctor Birkin." Interrupted Ellen before John could get a word in. Judging by the tangled mess of emotions rushing across his face, he wasn't expecting her to say that. "This is about vengeance."

"You still think I'm behind the infection of the Arklay facility?" Scoffed William. "I think that you all would have discovered by now that it was James Marcus and not I that infected you all."

-"And whose fault is that, asshole?" Answered Henry, pointing an accusing finger at him. Again, John seemed confused by their actions but didn't say anything, not until their intentions were clear at least, if William knew the man. "You and Wesker killed him and made sure that you guys were the last damn thing he saw, so he KNEW it was you! Ten fucking years later on and he comes back from the dead, probably not in the best of moods, and we fucking pay for it!"

-"It's bullshit, that's what it is." Steve said, backing up his partner in crime.

"You may not have directly done it, but we all still died because of you!" Said Rabbitson, taking on a defiant tone of voice that was alien to William: In life he had been very shy to those he didn't know and people in power with an air of confidence. William's impressive atmosphere seemed to have lost its effect in death. "And now, the whole city has just gone down the crapper just because you wouldn't give up your damn G-virus!"

"He didn't do that on purpose though, Bunny." Cut in John, surprisingly jumping to William's defence now that he had a feel of where this conversation was going, but it seemed more likely that John spoke up because he was far more interested in speaking the truth than looking for excuses to lynch Birkin.

"Dude, what's gotten into you, Johnny-boy?" Piped up Henry from the back. "Kicking his ass was your idea!"

"So that's it, is it?" William said, trying to regain his powerful presence he used to control them in life. "Now that you no longer have to worry about losing your job, you decide to go on a little lynching party? You disgust me."

"You're the fucking disgusting one!" Hollered Henry who was then joined by Steve;

"You've screwed over so many people with your selfishness and your little G-virus and everything!"

"I did it in the quest for answers," William said in his defence. "A quest your friend Doctor Howe partakes in even now."

"He didn't murder an entire city to do it." Said Ellen.

"Did you not hear me, woman?" William protested, grimacing threateningly. " I said I didn't know!"-

-"I went with you to Nosgoth, remember?" Cut in John, avoiding his stare and the tone in his voice almost mournful. It made William realise that maybe he didn't want to say what he was about to, but was doing it because it was the truth – an answer – something he could never resist, morally or otherwise. "Back there, Moebius played a nasty trick on you, remember? Some messed up kind of spell that accelerated your body through time and made you change into the G-mutation that's running loose now. He didn't expect it to happen. He just wanted to make you die of old age before our very eyes. He had no idea that in your future you would change into that. You can't tell us you didn't know that for the time accelerating spell to show you reached a level of G-mutation that couldn't exist without detection in civilised society, the civilisation would have to be wiped out to allow that level of undisturbed growth." John raised his fair head to meat William's eyes evenly. "If even I saw it, then you definitely would have, William… Didn't you?"

Rabbitson, who was the only other Arklay researcher that accompanied them on their mission, gazed thoughtfully off as even he began to realise that a man like William would have seen what John had said to be so. He wondered why he didn't see it, but figured there were some things that only a certain kind of man could notice straight away like that.

There was a difficult pause as William raced to find a response.

-"Answer him, murdering fuck!" Yelled Henry, not letting up on the mindless anger even slightly.

"I…" William couldn't think of a logical answer… He had to tell them honestly. The angry rabble of scientists had something untoward planned and showing them all the cards may have been his only hope. "I refused to believe it… convincing myself that I was paranoid…" William shook his head, pallid blue eyes squeezed closed and his face wrinkled in emotional distress. Recalling it all made him realise that all along he had feared this night, all along a dark part of him was screaming that when he became infected with the virus, Raccoon would fall but he ignored it believing his ignorance would protect him but when Marcus came back from the dead and Wesker died, he began to lose control of that worrying, nagging self. He had seen it coming. He had a chance to stop it and he chose to pretend he didn't know.

His heart shrivelled up and his eyes burn with the liquid of tears to think that his wife and daughter were suffering at the hands of the rotting, beastly undead at this very moment because of his unwillingness to accept the truth Moebius had accidentally (as if 'accidental' was in Moebius's vocabulary; he was even more scheming and manipulative than Wesker) shown him.

"So what - you go making like you're gonna squirt some and we're supposed to all forgive you?" Growled an angry Henry Sarton, walking threateningly towards the traumatized William Birkin making his threat seem a little more physical with the other researchers, except John, following him.

"What are you doing?" William asked, become very nervous now.

"Yeah, what the hell are you doing?" Asked John, becoming crossly concerned.

"John told us some of the stuff he researched in Nosgoth." Explained Steve Keller. As Rabbitson and Dees passed him, John shot a pleading look into the eyes of his friends, asking them what was happening, what they planned to do with him but Rabbitson frowned, shaking is head and Dees pretended he hadn't seen him.

The aggressing researchers fanned out around Birkin, cornering him again the far wall of the kennels.

"Do you want to know what he told us, Doctor Birkin?" Asked Ellen, staring at him ominously. She didn't give him time to answer. "How an ethereal based creature like a vampire or a SPIRIT can absorb the souls of other life forms to fill them with their power."

"You mean you're going to absorb his soul?" Yelled John, now in real distress. Clearly he had been invited to the angry mob under false pretences.

"Not quite." Admitted Ellen, cold eyes still fixed on William. "You see, he knows he is more powerful than any one of us, not being technically dead yet and if a single one of us tried to absorb him then we would most certainly fail, but our combined power is power enough to subdue him. We're ALL going to try and absorb his soul, tearing his very essence apart!"

-Suddenly, William tried to dash past them, but was caught by both arms and thrown violently to the cold stone floor. William cried out, his voice echoing incredibly in the dark, depressing dungeon as the rabble of vengeful scientists held his struggling soul to the floor, proceeding to tear it apart between them.

John ran his fingers anxiously through his blonde hair, feeling his heart race with fear and hatred for his friends using him for information in such a despicable way. He'd died at William's hands, more so than any of the scientists that held his screaming form to the ground but he didn't hate him. He didn't disserve this. -

- The door to the kennels exploded open and John, still standing at where the room kinked in an 'L' shape so he could view both the intruder and William's desperately flailing form dog piled by brutal researchers beating him down, felt a flash of hope when he saw the equally distraught expression on the intruder staring panicked back at him.

"**KAIN!**" John gasped, instantly recognising the unmistakable white hair and piercing yellow eyes of the specimen he, William and a selection of other choice Umbrella scientists abducted all those years ago. He pointed desperately at the traumatizing scene beyond his vision. "It's William! They're fucking tearing him apart!"

Kain did not hesitated even more a second, and in a selection of monstrously fast, powerful strides, he was on top of the scene and the screams of William were replaced by the screams of his attackers. His jet-black claws tore through the insubstantial forms of the scientists like a knife slicing through coloured mist. Though Kain did not feel the blows he was delivering like he would have done if he stuck a man of flesh, the blows registered on his victims faces, twisted and gnarled in agony as he cut through them.

Though John knew that defeating their material forms would just render their spirits into the spectral realm until they could recharge, he couldn't help but turn away with more than a flash of guilt as he saw Kain decimate the spirit of Bill Rabbitson, his youthful boyish face splashed with knifing pain and misery, before fading from this world altogether.

The room was now quiet save for the hungry barks of the zombie Doberman still locked inside the cages, Kain standing formidably in front of the soul he had saved from oblivion. John signed in an incredible burst of relief. They hadn't torn him and absorbed him; he was going to be okay.

"What in the world happened?" Kain asked both John and William, who was still crumpled on the floor in shock and disgust.

"Old friends…" William answered, his deep voice shaky and breaking. "Old friends with a score to settle."

"And what of him?" Kain asked, pointing towards John. It seemed the opportunistic vampire could not understand why John had not joined in on the attack: He would have satisfied his vengeance and acquired whatever power from William he managed to strip from him. "Were you not responsible for his death?"

"Are you kidding?" Said John, shaking his head with his eyes sombrely closed. "He made sure I followed him, but at a distance, when he escaped the infected Arklay Mansion, only to deny me escape at the heliport, watching me die right there in front of him."

"Then the answer is a pretty big yes, Kain." William said, picking himself up but still unnerved at how close he had come to oblivion.

"But… if that was indeed the case then why did you not join in?" Kain asked, his whole face creased in wonder and puzzlement. William smiled; Kain's world may have been very technologically advanced with the forces of magic but his world seemed behind theirs in social attitudes, culture and domestic technology by 200 or 300 years at the very least. Every child who watched children's T.V in this world had been educated in the answer.

"It just didn't feel right…" Confessed John, shrugging his shoulders. "He didn't do Arklay OR Raccoon on purpose… Talking to him, I always got the feeling all he cared for was the truth behind the viruses, not the money, not the power, unlike some of his associates."

William gently walked toward John Howe grinning and trying to make appreciative eye contact with the still very guilty man, who turned away almost shyly-

-Then the door to the kennels opened, and John and William dashed over to see who it was, both their faces, especially John's, lighting up in cheerful recognition.

"Ada!" Beamed John, clenching his fists and resisting the urge to dash up and hug the pale, beautiful Asian woman clothed in black leggings and a red dress. Handgun held in both hands with a level of experience and cold calculation about it that made William shiver yet John apparently couldn't see how unnaturally in control she appeared for a civilian woman.

Kain did not round the corner just yet to see who had entered, and allowed John to tell him, who was obviously invisible to the woman, as was William.

"It's Ada Wong, my girlfriend! Oh man, she must have come to Raccoon city to see what had happened to me when I didn't call her!"

William frowned.

"She looks… awfully unemotional…"

"Oh, Ada's always been a bit bad at expressing her emotions."

"Well zombies and monsters usually have the opposite effect…"

The woman rounded the corner, walking calmly through William, totally oblivious to the prescience of him and the soul of her boyfriend and stopped dead when she saw Kain. Her eyes did not widen in shock at his appearance, did not even show a glimmer of surprise or doubt flutter across her porcelain features, she just coolly raise her weapon, a pistol, but lowered it again when she saw Kain did not attack.

"Sorry…" She said in a dark voice, like melting chocolate. "For a second there, I though you may have been a zombie."

Kain was very suspicious of the unnatural composure in the woman. He couldn't understand how John couldn't see that she blatantly wasn't a civilian woman.

"Yet you dealt with the situation completely bare of the fear and repulsion that has gripped all humans in this nightmare.

She didn't react, not a single emotion on her almost predatory face and it made it nearly impossible for Kain to guess at what was going through her mind –

- The door clacked open again and I rushed a young man in R.P.D uniform, similar to the heavily armed police officers Kain had see die at the barricade. The white letters R.P.D across the chest making it unmistakeable as to who he belonged to.

"Ada, I heard a voice, what"-

- He caught sighed to Kain.

-"What the…"- He suddenly realised he was human, or at least as far as he knew. "A survivor!"

"Oh my." Said William, blankly. "He's a cute one, isn't he?"

Unfortunately, Kain couldn't argue with William's strange comment. Fair, youthful, young, the boy was quite an eye opener, his beautiful blue eyes complementing the blue of his uniform, yet despite his youthful good looks, he had a strange kind of authority about him, though if one was face with a choice between obeying him and going their own way, though one would feel guilty about it, they'd go their own way.

Kain frowned. He couldn't have been much older than the young rookie cop he met at the barricade… -

-And recalling the rookie cop, he remembered the golden pendant still hanging around his neck that he had given him as his dieing wish. He made a mental note of it; it could be important.

"Cute?" Said John, as freaked out by his comments as Kain was. "You don't batter an eyelid to the chick and you say the guy is cute?"

- The young officer frowned and turned, looking behind him, looking directly at William and John, who both froze and stared nervously back. The young officer then turned back, his face now creased I bewilderment.

"What's wrong, Leon?" Asked the woman, stating his name that Kain took into account.

"I…" He then shrugged it off. "I thought I heard voices. Damn, I must be shit-tired to start hearing things."

Kain felt himself smirk. At last, a human being that could sense the prescience of the spirits. He must have had a very emotional person to detect such a thing.

Ada turned her attention to him.

"Who are you?" She asked, now somewhat wary, though if an inexperience man gazed upon her face as she said this, they would not have been able to detect the slight undertone.

"I am Kain." He replied boldly. Unlike her he did not hide his sentiments for the humans. "And you are Ada Wong? Girlfriend to John Howe?"

"Yes," She said, either intrigued by his knowledge of her or pretending to be. "How do you know that?"

Kain looked over both their shoulders to John and William, his yellow gaze piercing into John for something to say to her.

"Tell her I love her." He said, and then William nudged him hard.

"Something that only you and her would know, Doctor Howe."

John tried again. "Ask her why she's not wearing the necklace I bought her on our date last month."

"John wants to know why you are not wearing the necklace he purchased for you on your little outing last month."

"John's here after all?" Asked Leon. Ada's eyes lit up, but not with relief, with surprise, like she was not expecting him to be here.

"'After all?'" Enquired Kain, finding Leon's choice of words unusual.

"Yeah, there's this guy we just had a chat to in the cells called Ben Bertolucci, but he's not coming out, I'm afraid."

"In the cells?"

"Yeah. He locked himself in there to stop himself from getting eaten by those monsters. We weren't making any progress until one of those monsters roared."

Kain eyes widened. "Roared you say?" Zombies didn't roar, and those inside out tongue creature with an exposed brain weren't loud enough to be heard from several different rooms away. It could have only been one man. "Then you all are in great danger. That monster that called is not any ordinary monster."

"What's ordinary about this entire situation?" Leon asked sarcastically.

"Do not try my patience, boy." Kain snarled. Leon was startled, but realised he probably shouldn't have tried to backchat if they really were in trouble. "The creature that screamed… You would not stand a chance against it. I suggest you leave this area immediately."

"That's why we're here." Ada said in her ever cool, unreadable voice. "Ben told us about a manhole in this kennel that leads out of the city." Kain noticed Leon was holding a crowbar but felt a flash of doubt enter him.

"The creature clearly is not here in this basement, but what if it is in the area beyond the manhole? It would be the safest choice to return to the precinct briefly."

Leon shook his head, going over to the manhole and prying its lid open.

"There's no reason for us to stay here any longer than necessary."

"For you maybe." Argued Kain. "But I have spent my entire time in this building, it seems, collecting these strange stones and I intend to uncover the mystery before I leave." –

-"NO!"-

-The terrified scream of a male human rang through the corridors mixed in with the familiar terrible cry of the William Birkin monster,

"Ben!" Called Leon, and instinctively rushed off to save the no doubt doomed man.

"No, Leon!" They all cried, even John and William, in unison. So he rushed off to save the day, but when he got there, who would save HIM?

"Uh oh…" Said William, looking down at his body. At the sound of uncertainty in his voice, John and Kain watched in awe as William slowly dissolved into nothingness. "It's calling me back!" He said, seconds before his disappearance was complete. "Stop!" He called out, his eyes whirling around as if he could see something they could not. "I don't want to kill any more people! I'm sick of it!" Almost totally faded now, Ada rushed off to help Leon, and Kain and John persisted to exchange worried glances as William tried his hardest to fight the G-viruses thirst for carnage. His appearance flickered into sight at random times, struggling to maintain control, but William cried out, and at the exact same moment, the roar of the monster sounded again.

"Screw him!" John suddenly said. "You should be with that cop and my girlfriend! You're the only man that could even stand a chance again the monster!"

John was right. He was wasting his time acting as moral support for the drifting scientist and John could provide that.

Hurrying from the room, Kain could see at the end of the corridor, wire mesh gates had been slid aside and the muddle of concerned voices came from them. He jogged to the opening –

- And saw three humans crouched on the floor next to an open cell. No Birkin monster could bee seen, or any trace of forced entry into the cell. There was NO WAY the monster could have come past them; the path from the kennel to the cell was a directly straight line, a dead end. It couldn't have slipped past. There was not a chance in hell of it possibly happening.

Leon, Ada and a man on the floor in a tatty attempt at a shirt and tie with lank brownish hair in a ponytail were the only things out of place in the room, shaded hues of depressing industrial blue.

"Damn…" Ben forced through whatever pain it was he was feeling. "I almost got the story…. " He handed some papers to Leon, before turning to Kain-

- "Where'd you get that locket?" He asked, his voice turning panicked, trying to weakly get up but failing

"Calm down Ben," Leon said, trying to still his struggles.

"I was given it by a young police officer, shortly before his demise."

Ben's eyes swelled at the word demise, then sunk back into a pain filled sorrow.

"God damn it all! I gave it to my pal D.J… He was the only one who'd believe what I'd uncovered about Umbrella and the G-virus… and William Birkin…I gave him the locket so he could get it the hell out of town…" He then motion with his hand as though he wanted Kain to come closer. Intrigued, he abided the light insult he took from it and crouched next to the dieing man. Ada and Leon leaned instinctively forward to listen in.-

-"Back off!" Ben said suddenly. Looking at each other reluctantly, they did so.

Ben leant forward right up to Kain until his struggling lips almost touched his pointed ear, so close Ben's disgusting old sweaty smell was all over Kain, and whispering as quietly as he could, as if he knew that only Kain could pick up such a hushed noise, he said;

"Watch Ada and watch her well." Kain frowned at the remark, but Ben continued. "When no one's around, open the locket and push the secret button on the back." Kain had the locket around his neck, but didn't touch it because of Ben's first remark.

"What will I find?" Kain asked softly.

"When you see it, you'll know what you're looking at… Kain."

Kain jumped back, glaring at the tiredly smiling stranger sat before him. The reporter knew whom he was, meaning he probably knew what he was too and all about William and his events. It was a shame he wasn't in much of a condition to talk. Just telling him those two little things seemed to have taken all his energy. He could have given Kain the answers he sought.

Suddenly, Ben's smile disappeared and was replaced by an intense creasing frown of pain.

"Aaugh…" He gargled, clutching the shirt over his chest, his hazel eyes darting about, searching as if for an answer as to what was happening to him.

"Ben, what's going on?" Asked Leon, rising to his feel, pushing Kain out of his way in a touchingly innocent panic and concern at what was happening to the reporter.

"My chest…" He forced out through the thick cloche of pain that had ensnared him. "It… It BURNS!"

"Get back!" Warned Kain, his threatening yellow stare trained on the chest of the man. He could hear something going on in there that humans could not, something that Ben could feel so intently that it must have been absolutely unbearable, the pain driving him into madness. Kain could hear something thrashing violently around inside him, tearing indiscriminately through flesh and banging against bone to find escape.

Leon turned to Kain, about to protest-

-When the thing inside Ben burst free, the orgy of blood and horror accompanied by the disgusting sound of tearing flesh, like peeling label, and mangled, terrible screams, the eruption of blood and viscera sending blood and flesh spraying all over the room. Leon was the closest to Ben so was drenched in thick globules of tattered bloody flesh and indiscernible gore, some splattering on his face and in his eyes, causing him to jump back from his crouch and sprawl onto the floor. Bits of blood and flesh splattered on the bottom of Ada's dress as the something that was embedded deep inside Ben struggled free. –

-And a squealing high-pitched howl rang out from its bloodied gaping hole of a mouth rimmed with countless tiny needle like teeth stained in Ben's blood and drenched in a thick, viscous saliva-like liquid.

There were no words between the humans, only shocked silence as the thing that was protruding from Ben's tattered corpse seemingly surveyed its surroundings, then raced past them all, past the shocked humans, past Kain and out of the open prison door into the basement corridor.

"Get it!" Yelled Kain almost immediately, but saw that the humans hadn't followed his example. Still shocked and stunned into unmoving silence, they stared dumbstruck at the mess that had been a living person barely seconds ago, now nothing more than a dead piece of meat. That transformation had rendered them temporarily mindless. Kain was used to the change however, he found himself in a dilemma; leave the mortals and pursue the creature and risk Birkin's monster returning and finishing them, or stay here with them while that strange creature disappeared to god knows where and no doubt jumped out on him later when he least expected it. –

- But despite his daze, Leon had somehow managed to find a small stack of papers besides Bens boys, almost completely cloche by thin layers of red slime. Kain had a feeling what they were even before Leon began to read them aloud, his voice still shaky and disturbed after having witnessed the horror of Bens dead.

"To: Mr Brian Irons, Chief of the Raccoon City Police Dept  
We have lost the mansion lab facility due to the renegade operative, Albert Wesker. Fortunately, his interference will no lasting effect upon our continued virus research. Our only present concern is the presence of the remaining S.T.A.R.S members: Redfield, Valentine, Burton, Chambers and Vickers. If it comes to light that S.T.A.R.S have any evidence as to the activities of our research, dispose of them in a way that would like purely accidental. Continue to monitor their progress and make certain their knowledge does not go public. Annette will continue to be your contact throughout this affair.

William Birkin"

Kain shook his head. It would have helped his situation if Birkin had told him Bertolucci had these documents on him. Now that the officer and the woman knew this, it would make it all the more difficult to explain away an innocent connection with Birkin.

"To: Mr Brian Irons, Chief of the Raccoon City Police Dept  
I have deposited the amount of $10,000 to the account for your services this term as per agreement. The development of the G-Virus scheduled to replace the T-Virus, is near completion. Once completed, I am certain that I will be appointed to be a member of the Executive board for Umbrella Inc. It is imperative that we proceed with caution. Redfield and the remaining S.T.A.R.S members are still attempting to uncover information on the project. Continue to monitor their activities and block all attempts to investigate the underground research facilities.

William Birkin"

Kain resisted the urge to snarl, but failed to hold back a slight snort. In their laps had fallen a piece of information that basically revealed all they would need to know about matters that it would be best they didn't. And to think Ben Bertolucci_, a reporter_ of all men, had got hold of it! Had he published it Umbrella would have fallen, had it not suffered the loss of Raccoon and all because they arrogantly overlooked one small-time reporter on a mission. He knew that young officer who had come across that locket somehow, and so had someone on the inside to help him out… but remembering the locket, Kain also remembered that Ben had told him to press a secret button on it's back. He looked at Ada briefly, but saw her engrossed in Leon's reading, so Kain dared to take a peak.

He didn't open the locket all the way, only a fraction open so that enough light got in for him to see a picture. Opening it wide now, checking Ada again to see if she had noticed, Kain paused briefly at what he was seeing.

It was a family photograph, and in the centre was Sherry Birkin smiling happily and either side of her was her mother and father. Kain bowed his head at their expressions of joy and slipping the photo out, he read a date scrawled on the back in neat blue ink handwriting: 'October 98'. Last month….

Kain frowned when he saw that there was nothing behind the picture, and yet the locket was much more thicker than the back that was revealed to him now. it felt hallow and Kain had a clue as to what the secret button would reveal. Pressing at a slightly indented button on the back, slowly the locket winded open revleaing a secret compartment in the back-

-And a sample of G-virus. Kain raised his eyebrows; Sherry Birkin worse the exact same locket around her neck, too. Kain has simply just assumed it was the same make, but something far more sinister was going on now. William's monster had taken back all the samples of G-virus that were stolen and injected them into himself, making this one of the last samples in existence. Sherry had one, and that neurotic bitch that was William's wife had one around her neck too, that was if he was remembering correctly, meaning that this sample must have once been worn around the neck of William himself. But why had he not mentioned it when William clearly must have recognised it while it hung around Kain's neck? He didn't even look at it briefly in acknowledgement…-

- Kain snapped the locket shut at the sudden movement of Ada, who loocked back at him once again in an unreadable blankness of expression. Leon briefly paused his reading, watching them.

"What's inside?" Ada asked.

"A family photograph; nothing important." He left out the part about the virus sample. After Ben's comment, he had grown suspicious of this unusually professional woman, considering the circumstances.

Leon raised an eyebrow, but continued.

"To: Mr Brian Irons, Chief of the Raccoon City Police Dept  
We have a problem. I have received information informing me that Umbrella HQ has sent spies to recover my research on the G-Virus. There are a number of unknown agents involved. They must not be allowed to take this project away from me as it represents my entire lifes work. Search the city thoroughly for any suspicious persons. Detain any such individuals by whatever means possible and contact me immediately through Annette. With these precautions, any possible threat should be eliminated. I will not allow anyone to steal my work on the G-Virus. Not even Umbrella...

William Birkin"

In the last two mails, Kain found himself puzzled. The second from last didn't sound much like the Birkin he had met at all, more concerned about promotions and money than about his work, but the last mail was directly on target with William's current sentiments… Why had he changed from caring only about the promotional aspects of his work to a man honouring his lifes work with almost religious zeal? Kain dared to think that it might even be because of him…

"Alright." Said Ada, the first to get up and break out of her ponderings. "I'm going into the sewers just like Ben recommended." She turned to Leon, meeting his frightened blue gaze squarely. "I'll go on ahead and clear the sewer passages of hostiles. You and Kain can sweep this area for whatever it was that came out of Ben."

"No," Said Leon, getting up onto his feet. "I'll go check it out, you wait here."

Ada smiled warmly and gratefully but Kain felt himself twist in sick annoyance. She was faking it: he could sense it and Leon going on ahead and leaving them two alone was exactly what she wanted. The trusting young police officer disappeared down the corridor and Ada didn't wait to turn to him until she heard the grey steel door of the kennel slam closed.

Her eyes, dark and cool, almost reminding him of William's unreadable stare, pierced into but in a way that didn't threaten you directly but made you feel as though she could see into your very soul and nothing you tried to hide would get past her.

"How do you know John?" She asked calmly.

"Does it matter now?" Kain replied defiantly. She may not have been demonstrating any emotion but she was still a whole head shorter than him and her used his position to grimace down at her threateningly, telling her that she'd get no important information out of him.

"He seemed to have told you about the necklace…" She said, strangely transforming into the concerned girlfriend she should have been. Her acting was good, but the artificial way she changed was what gave her concern away as fake. "I lost it, you see… I hope he isn't too offended."

"I don't care." Kain replied frankly. "But what I wish to know is why you have only just begun searching for him now when he had been dead for a number of months." It was true: The Mansion incident had happened two months ago and even long before then the cannibal murders had begun. John had been missing for ages and his alleged girlfriend didn't bother searching until conveniently the time Birkin had completed the G-virus synthesis. He was beginning to see some sense in Ben's suspicion. He must have know about all of this and found it very odd too that she'd only start search 'round about the time spies were due to steal Birkin's work. The woman was clearly not your ordinary female, either. Claire had arrived in Raccoon allegedly after the invasion of zombie, judging by what she had told him, and Leon must have arrived late considering he hadn't died at the barricade along with 95 of all the other Raccoon officers. (And his uniform was the likes of a specific armed unit in the R.P.D, all of which had apparently been sent out to deal with the zombies.) And here in front of him stood some female in a red dress armed with only a handgun, claiming to be searching for her boyfriend. She mustn't have come in with the others if her boyfriend lived in Raccoon… So that must have meant that with her little handgun she had survived where almost the entire trained R.P.D police force had failed. Add that to the unusually controlled and calm manner she was holding herself in this hopeless situation and was now certain someone powerful had sent her. She knew what she was up against; THAT was what her unreadable gaze was telling him. The very fact that there was no trace of any emotion on her face told him that she had no fear and no doubt about that would happen next like she was planning to strike now…

Kain felt his heart skip a beat when he realised how similar this whole event was to the Spencer estate disaster. Ada's role was the one traitor sent to recover scientific data in the midst of a T-virus leak, just like Albert Wesker…

You see, he had got a lot of information for rumours and the Internet (the sites and forum posts would be closed down almost as soon as they were put up so he had to work quickly) but all the concrete info he had received from a chance meeting with Chris Redfield, a S.T.A.R.S member and one of the major survivors of the Spencer estate incident. He had caught sight of him in a bar and instantly recognised him form the papers. Kain couldn't believe his luck at first, but as he began questioning Redfield, the man insisted that he wouldn't give up a drop of info to a suspicious stranger like him but after Kain informed Redfield on the development of the G-virus and what was happening to the town, he decided he would share what he knew in return. This lucky strike had been early on in his investigation so much of the information he had given him didn't make any sense at the time… He had told him about Albert Wesker, though; The S.T.A.R.S traitor who was sent to recover embryos of the specimens as well as collect battle data… Ada seemed to have a similar role.

Kain chuckled. As he quickly thought over what Chris had told him again, he realised that nearly everyone he had met had a role paralleling the Mansion incident. Strangely enough, Claire was playing Crises role; encountering a young girl who she desired to protect where Chris had found Rebecca Chambers, a young 18-year-old Bravo team member with a degree in some medical crap he couldn't remember right now, and Leon was playing the role of Jill Valentine who was being manipulated by Wesker through Barry Burton; an unwilling pawn. The question this brought to mind was 'is Ada a pawn of someone in this building Kain had yet to encounter?' This seemed unlikely. Wesker was in that mansion because he had to be. He didn't see any reason for anyone to want to stay here…

-Kain noticed Ada was inspecting his thoughtful trance and broke out of it in case he gave away any secrets.

"Can I help you?" He growled, finding the interruption rather rude.

"I don't know how you survived so long without a weapon." She said calmly, but almost with a sarcastic undertone in her voice.

"My claws are my weapons." He replied, and by tensing his hand, the black claws at the tips of each of his fingers extended out to full length. He may have had claws, but like most claw bearing animals, they were retractable. Vampires often trained on each other with retracted claws, seeing as bare fist blows did barely anything to the vampire body.

Ada jumped back in mild shock and glared angrily as Kain chuckled darkly; the frigid bitch wasn't expecting THAT.

"We should go and find Leon." She said, slightly angry and smoothing back her hair yet strangely trying to pretend what had just happened didn't happen… Some of the humans of this world couldn't handle the existence of supernatural forces, being so logical a creature. In contrary to Leon she must have been as empathic to otherworldly forces as a brick, the kind of woman who believes only what she sees and doesn't delve any deeper into the meaning. This was indeed handy for Kain's situation. It meant he would not have to explain away his abilities because she would simply not believe she was seeing something inhuman, probably something super-human.

"Perhaps we should." Replied Kain, moving to the door, the both of them ignoring the mutilated body of Ben as though it was a piece of meat and never once a human being. "Unless of course, he has already suffered the same fate as Ben."

And then, something Kain hadn't expected happened. He didn't need to see her face to feel the strong and powerful burst of concern and worry that tore through her only for a second before I died down again. Highly odd for someone so heartless to care so much for a civilian…

"Leon not some gung-ho macho-bund moron with a gun like some cops. He has the sense to run from danger."

"But what if he can't run?" Kain suggested, and Ada fell quiet, her pace behind him quickening. Kain smiled. It seemed that this mentally powerful and emotionless woman had a weakness after all…


	9. Part9: Sherry Mission 2

Sherry Birkin ejected the empty clip and reloaded the cool handgun Kain had given her with here frightened blue eyes fixated on the zombie dog that she had just killed with the deadly weapon. She still couldn't get over how Kain had trusted her enough to give her a gun: Her parents didn't think she was mature enough to get a pet Guinea Pig! The dead zombie dog on the floor was testament to how she was competent in self-defence and it was pretty neat finally having something to defend yourself with, turning from prey to predator with the addition of a weapon, but holding the gun out in front of her even with both hands was really difficult! It was like holding a brick! She barely managed to get the gun up in time as it lunged for her throat with its teeth, disgustingly oozing with unnatural quantities of saliva. The thing had basically been just like the human zombies; bits of skin missing, eyes cataract, but it had ran around and howled like a hyperactive, overly viscous hound, rather than the slow, deadly plodding of the human zombies. She'd never seen or heard of zombie dogs in the movies before, but wondered why. They were every bit as terrifying as the zombies only hundreds of times more lethal with their speed and ferocity.

The only place she'd ever heard of zombies was when her father William Birkin took her to an old B-Movie cinema in the rundown outskirts of Raccoon city. Her mother was very protective of her and had it not been for her father, then she may never have even gotten out into the outside world to even play! Every Saturday, her father got some time off to be with his family. She barely saw him the rest of the week, but every Saturday he would take her out to the cinema to see a film. Trying to predict what movie you would be seeing was like trying to find a needle in a hay factory. He'd take her to see movies with an adult rating but when someone tried to say she couldn't go in, he'd start ranting and raving about how she was an adult with dwarfism and how it was disgusting that they be so prejudice. It was blatantly obvious that she was a 12 year old girl and he was lying through his teeth but he kicked up such a fuss that they'd just end up letting them in to shut him up. It had even happened more than once where they went to see a movie with an innocent title that turned out to be something completely obscure, like a porno or something, and her father would absolutely insist upon watching it because it just wouldn't be Saturday if they didn't. She got the feeling her fathers' intentions were somewhat different from that, however.

He took her to see the odd zombie movie, which scared the crap out of her, but once you saw one zombie on the big screen, you've seen them all and she rapidly got bored of the genre. The Racoon zombies were much different however, more rotting flesh and gore visible than discoloured flesh. They were far more horrific and disfigured. Her father often laughed at the zombies in the movies, yelling out comments like 'come on - that's bullshit' or 'yeah right, like a zombie could do something like that' as though he was an expert on the topic or something. This pissed off a lot of the people in the cinema but it made her feel reassured, brining her back down to earth and stopping her from getting too absorbed and terrified by the movie.

Her fondest memory of a zombie movie was when her father asked for her chewing gum that she'd been chewing, stuck it in the end of a drinks straw, turned around in his chair, and fired it off at the camera at the back of the cinema. He scored a direct his and the second it struck, there was this huge shadow covering the entire screen that was the blob of chewing gum that was stuck over most of the lens camera lens. A huge roar of discontent rose from the crowd of people in the cinema and the movie had to be stopped for maintenance. She couldn't remember any other time when she'd laughed so hard…

She remembered why she was still searching for her father even though she knew he probably wasn't here anymore; She wanted to see him smile at her and joke with her to set her at ease again. Everyone else she'd met was so serious about their situation… It made her so nervous, so terrified… Her Dad wouldn't pretend their situation was good, but he wouldn't unnecessarily put the fear of God into her, either.

She'd been only in one duct since Kain left, and that was almost on the roof of the chamber. It'd been murder, crawling up the wall to get there, but somehow, using the corner or the room, she'd managed. She was now in another area of a sewer system… some steps leading down into a murky narrow alleyway with slimily green stone walls and the floor coated in a few inches of dark, dirty water. She wasn't going in there, that's for sure. When she fell into the disgusting semi-treated water in the room with the boxes, she didn't stop gagging for a whole minuet. It was ironic; the reek of zombies was far, far worse, but dip her in a little dirty water and she freaks out. She was frightened she might vomit if she went down there.

Of the other two doors, it was obvious the one she had to go through, as one on the wall opposite her and just to the left read 'storeroom' above it. The only way she could go was in the door on her right, which was open slightly ajar. Sherry readied the heavy handgun, just in case something jumped out on her (the feel of a good solid firearm in her hand really boosted her confidence: Before, she would have been terrified by her current predicament, but now it had simmered down to only constant burn of adrenalin in the pit of her stomach) and a quick sniff of the air made her realise the area didn't reek of the same level of decay the R.P.D did. Sherry guessed this must have meant no zombies… or a zombie that wasn't that far gone…

Well standing around here wasn't going to answer any questions she had. Opening the door wider with the muzzle of her gun, Sherry realised that she could infact smell _something_ coming from the room. It was a strange, feral, musky scent so alien compared to the decay of the zombies that she hadn't noticed it's faint odour in the air, but entering into the dark, sideways 'H' room, the smell became far more pungent almost suffocating the air itself. What made that kind of dark animal smell? Speaking of dark, the lights on the ceiling were either broken or switched off, so Sherry couldn't see very far into the think blackness of the room, only stiff, metallic outlines of light from the open door reflecting on machinery surrounding the 'H' shaped walkway. -

-One of the objects off which light was being partially reflected moved, a shadowy lump heaving itself up, like the motions of something organic… Sherry immediately pointed the handgun at it, but after several seconds of scared, shaky aiming at the sickeningly large moving mass in the blackness, she had to drop it down again. It was just too heavy for her to hold up for too long. It really put in perspective just how much stronger adults must have been compared to her.

Parts of the creature freed itself from the murky shadows and Sherry's heart froze in icy terror. A fleshy claw, twice the size of a human head, gripped at the steal walkway separating her from it, the sharp bloodied tips of its claw like fingers grinding into the steel and stripping it off like bark from a tree. It wasn't a zombie and it was too big to be one of those tongue-licking inside out men. Sherry didn't want to know what it was… Sherry didn't want to run from it either because it was quite possibly blocking the exit from this accursed building.

As it's inhuman, vomiting head protruded on, the acidy green lumps struggling and growing legs, screeching through their thin layer of slime…-

-Sherry had waited long enough. She opened fire, the bullets exploding into the body of the parent and blowing holes into its grotesque yet somehow elegantly constructed form, only to see the flesh she destroyed begin to recover almost as soon as the shots finished, new flesh eating over the damaged section and forming a hard callous. What's worse was that the wriggling lumps in its vomit that she had neglected now scurried across the steel floor in a terrible wet scratching, scuttling towards her like a sick slime covered mutant crustacean. She didn't have enough shots left in the weapon Kain gave her to destroy it and its mutant offspring… She fired again, this time at the offspring coated in thick discoloured gunge scuttling towards her, holding the weapon as firmly as she could in her tiring arms but she couldn't brace the heavy weapon effectively and it bucked free from her hands, narrowly missing her head and flying to the floor behind her. She shrieked in panic, the scuttling spawn and massive sluggish parent were closing in and now she had been rendered weapon-less, like she had been stripped of a great emotional shield and devolved back into the scared, incapable little girl she didn't want to be anymore.

She jumped back to the small black gun resting with its slide open on the floor, fumbled nervously at it, starting to cry now, and rummaged in her hip pack for a clip, finding her fingers couldn't work with the shapes in the back and dropping the clips as soon as her fingers found their shape. Turning back only briefly, she screamed when she saw the parent was nearly halfway down the walkway towards her, its spawn still searching for her-

-One picked up on her location by her shout and unexpectedly launched itself at her face, the wet heavy lump of its body landing on her shoulder, clawing at the fabric for a footing and tearing open the cloth there. In a mindless attempt to rid herself of the undeveloped monster that struggled to force itself down her throat, she dropped the handgun and clutched at it with both hands, forcing it away but finding it too strong for her arms weakened by holding the heavy mass of the handgun. It was too strong. It was going to beat her. And as its siblings and parent closed in on her, her mindless, delirious fear began to seep away into something pure and chilling; the acceptance of death. It wasn't comfortable or peaceful, infact it was worse than the pure terror of knowing she was going to die. There was nothing, _NOTHING _she could dothat would be able to save her now. -

- But a hand, a hand in a fingerless glove grabbed at the powerful scuttling creature and threw it from her with a loud yell. Claire wore exactly the same kind of fingerless gloves, but the voice that yelled was male. Thundering shots rang out next to her and one by one the slime soaked offspring exploded into a small burst of gunk. As the man reloaded, Sherry clutched at her handgun once more and successfully reloaded herself, stopping for a moment to look at her rescuer. He was defiantly a man, fairly young she guessed, and an R.P.D officer. He was very handsome too, pale, flawless skin and sparkling blue eyes… It was like something out of a fairy story to be saved from a terrible monster by a handsome prince and to think that such a wonderful rescuer awaited her caused her to blush. He was clearly terrified, but powerful and courageous enough not to let it rule him. He looked at her briefly and she turned abruptly away, finding her blushing accompanied by a hot yet pleasurable burning inside her stomach.

-"Sherry!"-

-A voice she recognised as Kain's sounded out from somewhere not too far outside the door and the feelings of what she recognised as a crush unexpectedly turned to shame and guilt. As Kain accompanied by an Asian woman in a red dress and leggings rounded the door and came to her, Sherry found herself unable to figure out why she had suddenly felt so ashamed at finding this young officer so cute…

The woman in red join in with the officers gunfire on the heavy, large monster that flinched briefly in its stalking towards them, the wounds on its body still healing over as soon as the bullet had hit. They both reloaded, and realising they would need all the help they could get, Sherry join in too, emptying clips at it as fast as she could. The two human adults at first appeared startled by her contribution, but ignored it for now and continued firing-

-Right up until a series of thunderous, rapidly firing shots boomed out from Kain that they had not been expecting also. They were all shocked to see that he had picked up a sub-machine gun from somewhere (she guessed it must have been the weapons storage room, which she couldn't get into because of the thick steel door barring her way) and the rapid fire of the weapon didn't allow for enough time for the callous to grown over the wound before it was shredded open again. Now, a racing hot bullet tore open skin followed by its brothers tearing into the wound it left behind continuously. The monster screamed a phlegmy roar, rearing its body up with its beady, reddish eyes rolling in its sockets before falling with a deep thump to the steel floor. Kain released the trigger and an ominous plume of smoke left the muzzle of the weapon. Kain didn't smile in satisfaction as she figured we would: his eyes simply watched the still moving mass on the walkway for any sign of an attack. The thing seemed to be liquefying itself, its hard flesh turning to a kind of jelly, which then dripped over the sides of the platform, its bone claws breaking to dust and becoming absorbed into the liquid that was its insides. It was of little threat to them now, and Kain was the first to speak after their battle.

"Are you hurt?" Kain enquired, and Sherry looked over the torn cloth on her shoulder.

"It didn't cut any skin, I think…" She was still very shaken up from her near death experience and sometimes when she travelled through the air ducts in the R.P.D, her fear would block out any pain of a scraped knee or a cut finger until she saw it with her own eyes and became aware of its existence. "But I'm running low on ammunition." She said, checking around in her hip-pack, counting only two magazines left. "If you found anything while I was gone I'd"-

-"You gave her a _gun_?" Asked the angry officer, getting up from his crouch beside Sherry and turning to Kain.

"I did." Kain responded calmly, showing no emotion on his pale face. His demeanour angered the officer further and Sherry felt herself smile a little at Kain.

"How can you be so irresponsible?" Barked the cop. "She's just a kid!"

-"And if I sent her _UNARMED _into the very jaws of the dangers of this night, that would make me perfectly responsible?" Kain snarled, greatly irritated by what he saw as the boys insolence and narrow mindedness.

"You should have gone with her." The woman said coolly.

"She's a child, not a lobotomy patient." He said sarcastically, standing face to face with the woman, but as she was quite shorter than him, he had to tilt his head down to talk to her, enforcing Kain's idea that she was below him and shouldn't argue wit his word. "When armed she it perfectly capable as any one of you. Twelve years is long enough to learn to shoot at a zombie."

"That's not the point!" Yelled the young cop, coming to the woman's defence.

"And just what _is_ your point? That she is somehow incapable of surviving as well as you?" Kain growled, shoving past the woman to confront the boy and grabbing Sherry violently by the arm. She didn't contest; she wanted to see how this turned out. "You are the only officer left alive in this building." Kain continued. "She has _survived_ where they have fallen. That is my reason for trusting her abilities."

Sherry felt a glow of pride inside not unlike the heat of a crush she felt on first seeing the officer. This powerful vampire had faith in her…! She'd never felt so proud in all her life!

"If we hadn't come in here when we did then she would be dead!" The officer yelled in Kain's face. Kain appeared to be holding back an explosion of rage, but he wasn't hiding it very well.

"If it were you or your woman in the same situation then you too would be face with death!" He yelled back into the officers' face. "Do not slander her by condemning her where you too would fail."

"You have no idea do you?" The officer barked. "You can't just go around giving kids guns just because they know how to pull a trigger! It's reckless and stupid!"

While the young yet authoritive (or at least, he was trying his darndest to be) officer continued ranting on about things Kain had already argued his point against, he squeezed Sherry's arm firmly in trying to attract her attention. She looked up at him, his eyes still trained on the young officer and his fully-fledged solo argument, but his concentration on the small girl looking up as him. He let go of her arm, and looking down at her only for a second, he muttered to her;

"There's a vent in the Storeroom." And a smirk danced across his black lips only for a second. Sherry suddenly took in what he had just told her to do, and not stopping to nod or say thank you for all that he had said and done in her defence, she ran out the door as fast as she could. The young officer finally stopped in her argument, yelling something after her like 'hey' and following her, but when she entered the storeroom and saw to her delight an air duct hidden behind a large storage chest, she knew the officer had probably stopped following her already; he didn't know which path she could have travelled down. This vent was new to her; it could lead anywhere. Silently, she thanked Kain and made her way back into the bowels of the R.P.D

Needless to say, Leon Kennedy was mildly pissed at Kain for allowing a child to roam free in the perilous precinct and now had all the more reason to hate him for allowing the girl to escape back into it with low ammo. Kain surprised a small, satisfied smile as Leon burst into rage;

"Why weren't you holding her properly! Now she's back in there with no one to protect her!"

"I do not believe she is in need of our protection at this moment in time."

"I don't give a shit what you think about her abilities! She's twelve! She doesn't disserve to have her innocence robbed like this!"

"It is too late for you or anyone to protect her 'fragile mind' from the horrors of what has come to pass on this night." Kain snarled, glowering down at the officer, feeling his temper reach fever pitch. It _MUST_ have shown on his face and yet the cop didn't relent!

"Don't you get what I'm saying?" Leon practically screamed into his face. Leon may not have been able to see how carried away he was getting, but Ada could, now becoming uncomfortable and telling Leon to calm down, only to be talked over by him completely. "You're an incompetent ass to let some kid run around in here! Don't you get that!"-

-Kain brought the back of his hand viciously across the fair cops face in a brutal slap that knocked him to the ground in a heavy, forced thud. He young man had been knocked stupid for a moment, and Ada, in her shock and anger, reached for her weapon, but relented when she saw Kain was more than prepared to snatch it from her the very moment her hands took hold of it. Whatever training she had undergone for such expert control of her temper was reflected in her lack of haste to attack Kain. Kain fixed his threatening yellow glare on her dark satin eyes as the officer groaned in pain, getting up to a slouch and rubbing a hand on his very painful jaw.-

-To find it come away with blood running down the black leather gloves. He traced claw like scratches across his right cheek in angry shock and rubbing his blood between his fingers he glared, infuriated beyond anything he had ever before felt at Kain.

"If only this were Nosgoth." Kain sneered, his voice coarse with rage. "If only it were so simple that I could snap your thin neck with my bare hands and revel as I take your blood into my body. And yet I stay my hand in this world because you are a survivor…" Kain strode up to the boy snagging his neck in his balled fist and pulling him up to his feet. The incompliant mortal did try to resist, but Kain was simply far too strong for the young man to even mark him. Kain licked the blood deliberately slowly from his cheek with his unnaturally soft tongue and heard Leon hold his breath for just a moment in sheer disgust and horror. Kain mouth looks similar to some canines, black gums with patches of pink and greyish salmon flesh here and there… What caught Leon by surprise was the feel of his breath on his skin. Every vampire (as he certainly appeared to be; if zombies could exist then why not vampires?) story he had ever heard of told him that they could not breathe, being undead and therefore breath unnecessary to them, but the hot flow of air on his tender bruising skin told him that vampires were infact closer to living creatures than any of the old stories had portrayed them to be. It figured… In ancient times, humans used to murder druids with knowledge of herbal remedies because they believed they were witches dealing with black magic. Herbal remedies would certainly seem like magic to someone brainwashed by a society deeming only those born into power were capable of intelligence. Humans demonised all forces of untamed power that they feared; wolves, witches and now vampires… If Kain hadn't been so a cruel to him, Leon may even have worked to understand him more.

Kain tossed him free of his grasp and the young officer stumbled backwards, rubbing the thin layer of saliva from his cut cheek.

"You are sailing very close to the line, my boy." Kain warned, his eyes now infused with a savage animal rage induced by the flavour of human blood. Kain had not taken a meal in quite a while: He was growing hungrier by the minuet… "You have no idea the desire I feel for you blood…" –

- Ada unexpectedly moved to subdue with him and was knocked back into the wall before she could even see the aggressive movement of his fists.

"Leave her alone!" Yelled Leon, rushing forward not to attack Kain by to help Ada up from her slumped heap on the floor. Kain tolerate Leons' actions wordlessly for a moment. Propping his white, clawed hand on his side, Kain then fumbled at the objects in his hip pack, his claws scratching again something made of stone…-

-Kain recalled what he was going to do before he saved William Birkin from oblivion.

"I am going back to the main R.P.D building to test my new key and to find a place where these stones work." Kain stated rather than asked. This time, they didn't contend with his views. "I see that at the opposite end of the room is a thick steel door leading out of this area with all the correct chess piece- shaped plugs intact. You can escape through there if you wish, or you could choose to sweep the building once more."

"There's no one left in there." Leon said, somewhat threateningly but nowhere near as demanding as before.

"Not even Claire Redfield?" Kain asked, and was pleased to see Leons' bright blue eyes light up in recognition. "You believed she was dead, didn't you? Please, let me guess: You said that you and she should separate to cover more ground, after arming her, of course."

"What I did with Claire is entire different from what you did to that kid you called Sherry!"

"Claire cannot be more than eight years older than the child. I suspect there may be even more years between you and Ada."

"This is different! She's a child!"

"Let's not go through this once more." Kain said with a sarcastic and weary tone of voice and pushing past the two he had put the fear of God into. "The fact of the matter is that you too have dumped a young woman alone in that building and so arguing with me to go with you despite this fact would be giving her a death sentence."

Leon scowled, but didn't argue. He felt he had had enough of Kain for now and could live with any mysterious disappearance he had planned for himself.

"I bid you goodnight." Kain said in parting with them. It was a good thing to go out on if he did not see them again, and knowing Raccoon City, he probably wouldn't. He had some more faith in Claire though. He had already witnessed her in two very distant locations of the R.P.D building and so it meant she was very capable of looking after herself in this nightmare despite her obvious youth. Kain simply didn't know what these stones would have in store from him once he found where they were suppose to be set so simply chose to expect nothing and that way he would not be surprised no matter what he encountered.

Sherry Birkin sat on the hard polished desk in what must have been that scary Chief Irons' office gently kicking her feet back and forth and waiting for someone to show up. On the way coming here, Sherry had ran into two inside out monsters and a few zombies, causing her to use up her last two clips. She had been pretty close to a vent at the time and so travel through there until she reached the relative safety of Irons' office. The desk smelt strange, like it had been very recently polished, the artificial scent stinging her nostrils slightly, still so very strong in the air was it. What puzzled her was why someone would polish a desk so thoroughly at a time like this. At least it told her that Irons must be close by; if he cared about the albeit creepy room to maintain it so well then it was likely he would come back to it some time soon… Granted, she was terrified of what Irons was like to be responsible for the disappearance of that unfortunate Sectary, she had no ammo and at least needed to ask him for some if he turned up. She searched the room over once and once was more than enough. Probing around mahogany display cabinets full of stuffed animals was creepy enough the first time around. Sometimes as she looked around them for items with her stare fixated warily on the glass eyes, she was even scared that they would come back to life just like one of the zombies and attack her. Yes, she was quite happy on the desk like this, facing the only two doors that entered and exited the room. The one of the wall opposite leaded into the corridor of the main building. The one on the right wall lead to the corridor that then lead to the storage room where she had first met Claire Redfield. The monster that had been stalking her couldn't have been around here anymore; the thing Kain put down in the basement looked so much like it in design that it could only have been some kind of offspring of the monster itself. It was probably down there now, looking for more victims to infect…

There was a click of the opposite door and Sherry jumped up off of the desk, knowing she was cornered by whatever came in to meet her but now after all she had been through, not really caring if it was human or zombie. She had been greatly desensitised by that one near death encounter and though she was no longer terrified and worried as she used to be, she still felt the strange sting of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach. Without the fear… it … well… it felt kinda _good_…

Sherry's face lit up with a smile when she recognised the one who entered as Claire, her face cautious and wary but breaking into a smile at the sound of her voice.

"Claire!"

"There you are sweetie!" She smiled, closing the door softly and lowering the handgun to her side. "I was worried about you."

"It's good to have you back, Claire." She smiled, then began her pitch: "Uh…" She was unsure whether to ask her for the ammo she needed, finding her hand grope around the back of her neck nervously. Was it her imagination or had it just gotten suddenly very warm in this room? That cute cop didn't like the idea of her using a gun and he was a man! Kind, mothering Claire sure as hell wouldn't like it one bit.

"What it is sweetie?" Claire asked, moving through the room to her. "Don't be shy. You know you can tell me anything."

Sherry braced herself and pasted on an apologetic look. "I ran out of bullets for my gun… If you have any clips spare… I'd be glad to take them off you… please?"

Claire frowned, turning serious. "Sweetheart, where you get a gun from? Those things are dangerous!"

"I know Claire!" Sherry protested. "And if they're so damn dangerous then why has it been the only thing stopping me from dying?" Sherry didn't let any weakness show on her face. Claire may have wanted to protect her but she had to understand that if she weren't around, the gun would protect her instead. The cop was a cop, after all. All he could see was the illegal use of a firearm by an underage kid. His training meant that he didn't understand that on a night like this, such cultural taboos had a value of jack-shit. If it weren't for the gun Kain had given her, she'd be dead by now! Who cares if she's too young to use it; it's doing the job it's meant for!

Claire kept her warm and unthreatening smile, but her eyes were laced with an unsure worry. "You're probably right, sweetheart, but what if you shot a person by accident?"

"It's the same for you, Claire!" Sherry protested, balling her hands into fists. "What if you shot that cop by accident?"

" 'Cop'?" Claire asked. "Then that must mean you've met Leon?"

"So _that's_ his name?" Sherry blushed at just how exotic a name that such an attractive young man had but then shook her head to herself in a disappointed apprehension. If a cute girl like Claire new a handsome cop like Leon, then that probably meant… "Is he your… boyfriend?"

Claire looked shocked, yet in an amused way, spluttering into a chuckling laughter. "Oh! Uh, No honey! We've only just met on this night! He saved me from the zombies when I ran into town."

Sherry sighed wistfully at the thought of it. "Oh, he saved you too huh? What was it like?"

Claire laughed. "This really isn't the time or the place to be discussing boys Sherry. Besides, he's way too old for you."

Sherry hung her head, still smiling but a pouting a little. "You're probably right Claire…" But while she was here, she may as well asked the mature woman more about matters of the heart. "Claire, when I first saw Leon I felt really guilty at having a crush on him and I don't get why…"

Claire frowned, just as perplexed as she was. "I don't get why either, sweetheart…I could understand why if you already had a boyfriend…"-

-The door clicked open again and Claire jumped around, breaking off the girly chat with Sherry and preparing her handgun. As a last thought, she tossed a clip to Sherry, who caught it barely in both hands. Claire flashed a smile at her briefly, and then turned her attention back on the opening door.

"Chief?" Claire asked cautiously, referring to Chief Iron who owned this office. The door swung open and to Sherry's shock and delight, the figure that walked in filled her with the same sense of guilt she had experienced when she eyed up officer Leon.

It was Kain. Kain was what was making her feel guilty about being attracted to Leon. She had crushes on men before… She knows what one feels like. Why was she so guilty if she didn't feel the same for Kain?

Kain's prescience always took you by surprise when you talked to him around other human beings to compare him too. It wasn't until she saw him and Claire in the same room that she realised just how ashen his skin was. It was as white as pure driven snow; beautiful yet disturbingly inhuman. Even the zombies themselves had more colour in their cheeks but she figured that was the discolouration caused by decomposition… Claire's skin was also very pale in parts that usually remained fully clothe, like when her figure hugging black sleeves rolled up under her sink denim, the flesh there was very deathly pale indeed but Kain white hued body was terrifyingly colourless. Also, she had had the pleasure to receive a firm hug by both Claire and Kain. Kain's body was a solid as a rock all over whereas Claire's' skin was plush to the touch. Most humans, even the physically fix ones, were very soft where their muscles were involved. Kain was so impossibly rigid all over that she seriously wondered if striking a chair across his back would hurt him much at all. The analogy of marble wasn't far off from his physical appearance. Pure marble was a beautiful and unblemished crystal-like white and as tough as solid rock, but it was eroded by certain kinds of acid rain. Sherry smiled: She remembered how Kain told her water burnt him too. His body was as perfect as a carved marble statue, and he stood as proud as one too. A statue doesn't have such piercing, savage eyes, though…

"Claire Redfield and Sherry Birkin…" He said, as if he had some kind of strange ulterior motive going on that they had yet to learn. "You will be please to find that I have investigated all rooms but this one in the Police department."

"Why- What does that mean?" Claire asked, taking cautiously hold of Sherry's hand. Sherry didn't like this grip much; she was protecting her were she didn't need protection and she didn't like it.

"It means," Continued Kain, striding in heavy powerful steps around the low coffee table towards them. Claire backed away and tried to take Sherry with her, but she wriggled free from her grasp and gave her a mildly angry look. Sherry knew to trust Kain even if he was the most suspicious character here. At least for now… "That the great puzzle of the R.P.D is solved somewhere in this room."

"What puzzle?" Sherry asked, and Kain smirked, apparently appreciated that Sherry taking an active role in Kain's reasoning.

"This one." He took from his hip pack four stones: One yellow, one Red and two blue which appeared to be half of each other and laid them on the polished Chief's desk Sherry had been sitting on when alone in the room. The pictures on them were strange… the style reminded Sherry of some of the ancient tribes of what was now Mexico: Incas and Aztecs and all that… The 2D stylised drawings of what looked like a serpent on the red stone, an eagle on the yellow stone, and when the two halves of the blue stone were put together, they showed a wild cat that looked like a jaguar… "Now all I need to do if find a place to insert them."

Claire considered an insulting jest at this point, but decided that she didn't need that kind of trouble right now.

"And it's gotta be somewhere in here?" Asked Sherry, gazing excitedly up at Kain with alert and responsive little blue eyes. Kain nodded, and the second he did so, Sherry dashed away from the desk, shoved past Claire and ran up to a strange abstract painting behind the desk and chair. The painting was just above her reach so she had to kneel in the expensive looking leather swivel-chair positions on the opposite side of the desk from Kain. Sherry tapped a small red button next to it and the painting slid to one side to reveal three square holes each exactly the same shape as the three stones Kain had found throughout the R.P.D.

"I found this when I was looking through the room for some bullets for my gun." Sherry explained with a proud smile. "I was scared that if Chief Irons found me in here with this to one side, he'd kill me like he did his Sectary so I slid it back."

"Very good." Muttered Kain, acknowledging her success but being very lenient with his compliments. Sherry wasn't offended. She could tell he did it without even thinking.

Kain picked up two of the three stones, one in each hand, and Claire grabbed the two halves of the third. The pattern on the hole was diagonal across the display, one in the sky, one on the very base of what appeared to be the earth, and one at the very bottom.

"Place the Jaguar stone at the bottom." He instructed her. Kain placed the Eagle stone in the very top slot that was aerial in the picture. That much made sense.

"How do you know to put the others in this order?" Asked Claire as she put the two halves in place.

"I don't." Replied Kain. "But if they are in the wrong order, we need only switch them over." It made sense, and as Kain slot the final stone into position, Sherry heard the click of a trigger mechanism. Kain and Claire jumped back slightly at the sudden movement of the blank wall right next to the puzzle. It shook slightly, then slid itself out of their way with a stone grinding sound filling the office to reveal a hidden passage concealed behind it. Claires' fair face looked surprised but Kain's was ever a blank and defiant mask of power. He even seemed to be expecting as much.

"So… do we go in?" Asked Sherry. She was now a little scared by their unwillingness to explore further. She expected them to go right in but they just stood staring at this secret corridor as though they had received a death sentence. "I mean… this could be the only safe way out of here…"

"I'm not sure we should go in there, sweetie." Claire told her, not relenting in her soft tones even infront of the dangerous vampire. Strangely enough, Kain seemed rather irritated at Claires' attempt to talk to Sherry in a kind and warm manner. "It could be very dangerous if we go inside without knowing what's in there."

"What you mean to say's that you don't think I can handle any of it cos I'm a kid!"

"Sweetheart"-

-"Sherry," Interrupted Kain, taking the wheel and ultimately pissing Claire off. "Do you believe that you could defeat the spawn in the sewers with just your handgun? That creature burst forth from the chest of a live and conscious man. His death was incredibly painful and if one of those scurrying sawn reached your mouth it would have done the same to you."

"_Kain_!" Yelled Claire, tremendously disgusted at Kains' blasé attitude to carnage, especially in front of the child. "What are you trying to do to her?" Claires' maternal strategy was loving and compassionate. Kains' was utterly the opposite, a stark and cold declaration of the bitter facts and no attempt to act with an ounce of empathy in front of the child. What he said could have terribly screwed her up had it been on any other night than this. Or so Claire believed.

"…Kains' probably right…" Admitted Sherry reluctantly. "We'd probably be a burden."

"'We'd'?"

"Do you suppose I intend to take an equally as useless female with me? You are both armed with identical weapons so you are both as much a danger to yourselves and myself as the other. I, however, still have at least 50 ammunition left on my submachine gun. I am fully capable of taking care of myself and do not need a female to guard my back, whether she be of twelve or twenty years."

"You wont survive alone! You HAVE to take me with you!" Demanded Claire angrily. She was deeply offended to be classed at the same skill level as Sherry.

"And leave Sherry all lone? Are you that hysterical, woman? Like it or not, if it is unsafe for Sherry then it will be unsafe for you." He folded his arms in a 'this-discussion-is-over' posture. Claire was enraged but complied simply because she couldn't really think of a way to argue with him. At least she didn't argue an irrelevant point constantly like Leon had done. She may have been younger than the officer, but she certainly seemed a lot less naïve in comparison to him.

"So you want to go in there alone? Are you nuts?" Claire complained in what was a last attempt to change his mind.

"I have a submachine gun." Kain told her. "I am more than physically able to deal with the zombies and monsters of this world and _if_ I am outnumbered then the weapon would be a helpful alternative." Kain tried the strategy he used on Sherry loosely with Claire, softening his voice lightly. "The monsters of this night are nothing compared to what I had faced and defeated. You don't need to fear for my safety, infact" Kain tossed Claire his submachine gun and she caught it just before it hit the wooden floor. "I don't need this at all."

"You can't do that!"

-"He can, Claire!" Sherry spoke up, gently spinning in the leather swivel chair that belonged to Chief Irons. "I saw him kill a whole bunch of zombies with his bare hands in a couple of seconds!" Claire turned to Kain in impressed shock, though Kain couldn't understand why she was so surprised about his prowess; did she think he was exaggerating?

Kain moved to the secret passageway but was stopped from behind in the doorframe by Claires' gentle hand on his shoulder.

"What do we do if you don't come back?" She asked grimly, and Sherry felt her heart sink down to the very pit of her stomach at the insinuation that this could be the last they see of him… But Claire was right to bring it up. The comment brought the entire situation back down to earth from the excitement of seeing her two rescuers together and back to the dark seriousness of the state of affairs. They had to be prepared for the 'just-in-case' situations.

Inside, Kain was cross at the implication that he was in someway sufficiently inferior to the mindless zombies that they would so effortlessly defeat him, but oddly enough to him the rage didn't sit in his chest for very long. It dissolved away with a playful smirk.

"That, Claire Redfield, is not going to happen."

"Where does that confidence come from?" Claire joked with an ironic grin and smiling back, Kain and Claire parted ways. Sherry stared nervously up at Claire with her anxious, childlike features cringed in a strangely maternal worry. She flinched at the sudden metal sound in the corridor, like a gate being drawn open, then closed, and the mechanical rattling of an unstable old lift descending from the passageway.

Sherry looked back to Claire when the sounds had ceased with that same anxiety about her entire manner. Sherry didn't know why she felt so strange about him leaving them; she _knew_ he could handle himself, why get so upset? She missed her mother and her father both very much, but her longing for them was inexplicably different than her desire for Kain.

"He'll be okay, sweetheart." Claire said in that wonderfully reassuring musical voice of hers, her eyes soft and understanding but not serving to reassure her as much as she would like it to have.

"I know he'll be okay, Claire…" Sherry said slowly, forcing each word out like it was thick and stiffening in some strange resin of the heart. "… But I also think that he's probably a real bad person back where he comes from, like being nice to us is all a real big strain on him or something… but…" Sherry's eyes were filled with a deep watery emotion that sent alarm bells ringing inside Claires' head. She couldn't decide whether seeing Sherry show such emotion for the savage vampire like this was a good thing or a bad thing. "…But… I really don't want anything bad to happen to him, Claire… I don't know what I'd do to myself if I found out he got hurt real bad…"

Claires' eyebrows rose at that dangerous comment. She may not have been entirely okay with Sherrys' strange set of emotions for a man who physically appeared old enough to be her own father, but she felt it was her duty to protect Sherry while Kain was away.

"Sweetie," She began, walking tenderly closer to Sherry, the small girl losing her hold on her ambivalent feelings with each step Claire took, clutching at the arms of the leather chair harder and harder until her nails dug into the material in long grey scratches. "Kain wouldn't want you to hurt yourself because of him." Claire then smiled, but didn't let up on her concerned look for her frightened little Sherry Birkin. "He doesn't show it very well but I get that he likes you a lot, and besides, if he found out you were getting all weepy over him going to fight those monsters then he'd probably be really offended." Sherry chuckled slightly but Claire could tell that she was still pretty worried about him. Claire would have thought it was rather sweet if the 'he' in question wasn't a genocidle maniac of a vampire with an extremely antisocial demeanour. Claire preferred it when she had a crush on Leon. He was a youthful young man with boyish charm and good looks. Kains' appeal was far from naïve and boyish, though Claire could easily see why a mature female would find him appealing. It just wasn't comfortable that such a little girl would dig that sort of… man… But Sherry never once said her feelings from Kain were a crush; maybe she really was just concerned for him…? Maybe she saw in him a fathering figure, a void that he filled with the absence and possibly death of her parents.

At least, she _hoped_ she loved him like a father…

The green stonewalls of the seemingly gothic-horror style secret underground passageway appeared slimy and damp in the dull light cast by the flickering orange flame of classical wooden torches leniently dotted along the walls of the sinister dungeon-like corridor. Kain felt this corridor would no be out of place in one of Voradors' dank, cruel torture cells back in his home world of Nosgoth. It was most unusual that in a world so futuristic to the vampire, one would have such a gothic passageway of stonewalls and wood burning light sources hidden beneath the modern-furnished building of the R.P.D… Whoever dwelt here had a taste that reminded him so intently of Voradors'. Vorador, before his near-death experience evolving a certain elderly conniving time streamer and a guillotine, was more than just a callous man and prided himself on his soulless torture of innocent human beings for his amusement but had claimed to have changed somewhat in recent years. Granted, there was a time in his vampiric existence as a fledgling where Kain would have been similarly amused by the torture of humans. It didn't matter to him then whether they were innocent or not; he believed all humans were born for the pleasure of the vampire race-

-Kain stopped for a moment, finding himself become a little frustrated by his own ideals: Had his tastes really changed that much since Mortanius first freed him of the curse of humanity? Or was it only current events that had changed his views? -

-Kain ignored himself and continued his slow and cautions pace down the dank murky corridor. He found no shame in freely admitting the humans of this world were _not_ the humans who support the genocide of his kind back in his world, but just how different from the far more tolerant humans of this world were the ones on his?

Each of his heavy footsteps were amplified by the hard cobbles to an extent that Kain feared it would give away his prescience to who or whatever lay in wait for him at the end of this corridor. Kain could not ignore the fact that a human of this world designed this place. Granted, they were different from the ones on Nosgoth, but this whole area of shimmering, uninviting blackish green stone warned him that in some places of this world one could find a human with the same pitiless heart as the humans he was used to back home.

Kain finally came to the conclusion of the alleyway: A large, dark-wooden door rimmed with black metal and a dark rusting ring as its handle. By the framed of two recently lit and burning torches, Kain was warned that someone must have been here recently to ignite them. Kain even shook his head as he advanced to the door, seeing chains with wrist-sized rings handing from them on the wall next to the door. This indeed seemed to be some kind of sadistic chamber to the darker pleasures of death and misery.

Taking hold of the tarnished black ring, Kain pushed his body again the wood and the door slid loudly and creakily open on intentionally rusty hinges into a chamber of similar dank stone brick. The stench of strong disinfectant was the first thing he could truly sense about the room, the smell knocking him back it was so intense. The room itself had been a chamber dedicated to torture, as he suspected, and entering into the room, looking it over with his yellow eyes that were still mildly stinging from the strong artificial cologne, he pieced together the purpose of the strange collection of jars of pickled organs and bloodied cutting instruments. This room was dedicated to the art of taxidermy: The extracting of organs and fluids from a dead animal and filling them with preserving substances to make life-like ornaments. The large bench in the centre of the room was still stained in fresh blood, which ran on an intentional slope on the desk into a bucket full of the red nectar placed beneath it. The bloods scent had been masked by the painfully strong odours of chemicals and the thought of feeding from this blood was not the most appetizing image to Kain; it was no doubt infected with the waste chemicals and would make for terrible feeding.

He entered further into the dank room, his gaze tracing curiously over the shelves of preserved organs from various animals, and coming to rest upon a rusty metal lid on the floor of the chamber possibly leading to yet a lower level of the R.P.D, basement or perhaps, a way of the building altogether-

-The door behind him banged violently closed. Kain jumped around, remembering he was weapon-less, and hissed at the source of the noise, baring his fangs, causing them to grown longer in preparation of attack.

What he saw was a middle-aged man he had recognised before from his short life in the town. The man was the piggish Police Chief Brian Irons, and _he _was armed, training the handgun on Kains chest. When Kain had entered, Irons must have been hiding behind the door and Kain mentally kicked himself for not sensing the prescience of the man so he wouldn't have walked into this obvious ambush. The man was fat, moustachioed, and wore one of those sleeveless pullovers that made every man who wore them appear ten years older than they actually were. The expression on his ugly face was of a grim satisfaction at having captured the vampire.

Irons chuckled. "So you made it this far. Not bad for some lanky Goth!"

"Chief Irons." Kain snarled, making his abhorrence evident, letting him see that because he was armed, it did not mean he was in control. The Chief saw things differently.

"I can only assume you're with that girl. The ones who claims to be the sister of Chris Redfield." Irons laughed. "I supposed it was the most obvious choice. She looked a bit like Redfield, but I really don't see why she believed I would favour the sister of that cocky bastard."

"What are you babbling about you foolish old man?" Kain growled in confusion, not understanding Irons' reasons for refusing to believe Claires' truth.

"I'm talking about the spy, as if you didn't know. Your accomplice." He smirked in smug pride for sniffing out what he thought to be his plans.

"I work for no man as his agent, pig." Kain spat, but apparently this commanding aura was having no effect on the insane police chief. And if this sanctuary of death was indeed his, then he was insane long before the monsters of Raccoon got to him.

-"Shut up!" Irons spat back, aiming the gun at Kain at arms length, moving slowly and slimily towards him like a sickening, slick snake. "Those monsters from Umbrella have destroyed my _beautiful_ town! How dare you pretend to know nothing of them! You're one of those spies sent to finish me off!"

Kain backed away but was stopped by the far wall. He acknowledged that to his left was the floor-exit to the subbasement but it appeared firmly locked. Kain didn't yet have the strength to pound through the thick metal covering. He couldn't (and most likely wouldn't, if offered the choice) escape and as of yet he couldn't risk fighting Irons. A well aimed bullet from any gun was enough to kill him and unlike the hysterical William Birkin just before he became a G-Mutant when he fired randomly in his general direction, Irons was a police chief with military training: He wouldn't miss a whole clip like that.

"You flatter yourself to believe Umbrella did all this to Raccoon just to spite you."-

-"IT'S ALL UMBRELLAS' FAULT!" Boomed Irons over Kains last words. "And everything's been going downhill ever since I started to associate with Birkin! That's where it all went wrong! William Birkin and his neurotic wife and brat daughter! I should have never have opened my town to them!"

Of course… remembering the papers Leon had recovered from Ben, Irons had been accepting bribes to keep things quiet for Birkin from some time… But Birkin paid Irons extra to keep spies from the city – the very spies in dark clothing that had attempted to rob the viruses from Birkin and had caused this whole disaster!

"You fool!" Barked Kain. "It was your incompetence that caused this! Had you been doing what Birkin paid you to do than just spending the money to build you disgusting little collection, then those armed men would not have found Birkin with his G-virus and caused the T-virus leak!"

"How _dare_ you blame me for this!" Screamed Irons, close to melting point now, thumping his free fist against a fiercely aching temple with his thick voice echoing sharply in the cold stone chamber. "And now Umbrella has even managed to ruin my plans for revenge! Why did it have to be you, you filthy man, and not the fine young girl to come down here! I had it all planned out what I would do to her to make her pay for her employers' crimes and now you've managed to ruin that too! Does Umbrella want my every chance at a little fun on this night stripped away from me?"

"You sick pervert…" Kain found himself muttering under his breath out of sheer hatred. Unfortunately, Irons heard him.

"You….. _DARE_?" Irons, for some reason, let this go, stalking closer even still to Kain until he was inches away from the vampire with his gun still trained on his body. Irons may have been as mad as a hatter, but not too stupid. If Kain tried to snatch the gun at such close a range then Irons would take his head off with that weapon. "I suppose it doesn't really matter any more what you have to say, or any of us for that matter. No one survives alone, spy. But if _I_ have to go… _I'm going to take you with me!_" –

- **_Gyraaaahh-_**

Birkins' roar! But very close by! So incredibly ear-splitting and skull rattling close that Kain would have sworn the monster was in this very chamber-

-The metal cover on the floor exploded into two pieces flying into the air as though they were made of cardboard, one of them striking Irons' body and causing the area to become torn, both flesh and clothing mangled into each other. Iron glanced at him in confused horror, and then from the pit burst a humongous claw fist wrapping itself around Irons' ankle and dragging him down into the darkness below. The moment he disappeared from Kains' view, the screaming began and spurts of Irons' blood and gore rupturing up, splattering Kain, nearly completely covering his boots in a thin later of red slime and splattering at his face with dark dots of the fat mans liquid.

The expression on Kain face was unchanged from his usual countenance of stern heartlessness as the horrifying struggle below finished with a final scream from Chief Irons. Kain snorted to himself, feeling there was at least some justice on this night. He thought Claire was a spy; an ironic condemnation since all the evidence Kain had discovered for the existence of an agent pointed to Ada, a woman being protected by one of his own officers.

From the gloomy pit rose bitter cold air wafting upon it the thick scent of human blood. It invigorated Kains' senses to the point of excitement but Kain didn't descend to face the bizarre police chiefs' killer just yet, just to be sure he did not fall onto an awaiting attack.

Kain smiled when he remembered the roar he had heard seconds before the attack. It had been William Birkins' physical form, the G-Mutant, which had been responsible for 'saving' him. The question was, had Birkin done this deliberately to protect Kains' life, and in the process his Sherrys', or had the mindless G-Mutant attacked out of nonsensical hunger and rage and saving Kain had only been a mere coincidence?

Feeling he should posses more courage on the matter of facing the G-Mutant, sentient or not, Kain crouched by the blood-rimmed opening in the grey stone floor-

-and something, moving too fast for even Kain to see straight away, burst free from the hole. Kain dived back out of the way as it struck the ceiling, leaving a horrid bloody mark, and thumping in a cold wet splat to the grey stone floor. The scent of fresh human blood engulfed Kain and he recognised the object that had burst from the pit to be Brian Irons, or at least what was left of his top half. His face and head had been left relatively free of any mutilation, except from an unnatural dent on his skull left from violently impacting the ceiling. His arm was also free of any serious damage, but his right arm, the weapon arm, was missing altogether, only parts of jagged bone protruding from a gory shoulder socket. The shoulder that had held his right, weapon wielding arm looked as if it had been blown apart, the arm torn from his body with just such a great and powerful force that if left him looking as if he had held a grenade for too long. Irons' body ended just below his ribs, parts of his insides trailing out over the floor along with a steadily spreading pool of blood and bits of curved bone that must have been parts of his ribcage.

Kain stepped over the mess back to the hole… but found himself unable to ignore the thick scent of fresh blood filling the room. He licked his lips. He was just so _thirsty_… He had had to restrain himself so much on this night… He figured he deserved a medal from not killing Leon and Ada back in the chess-plug-door room, and he could have quite easily have done it.

Willing Irons blood to his mouth was easy enough even as weakened as he was. The thick screamer of blood seemed to taste far more delicious than any other blood he had taken recently. It must have been because he had denied himself the pleasure to feed on those mortals that made this blood taste so much better than he was used to. His mouth had been aching for this moment and the abrupt burst of flavours across his thirsty tongue assaulted his yearning senses with sweet flavour so aggressively that he cringed in pure pleasure.

Down below, a similar event was taking place. The occasional soft growl and snap of bone sounded up from the hole as the Birkin monster fed on Irons' body parts and satiated his need for flesh.

Kain jumped down the hole when he had finished with his part of Irons to face the creature below. He could've taken the steel ladder down, but the drop was only about four meters – a short distance to fall for a vampire. The rungs of the ladder were stained blood, much like everything else Kain beheld in the strange subbasement. Irons had put up a fight, it would seem, but losing his weapon arm had cost him dearly. After the blood on the rungs came a blotch-like puddle directly below the entrance, as if one has poured a bucket on blood into the subbasement itself. From this Kain could tell Irons had been clinging to the ladder for his life when the monster pulled him so violently his body tore into pieces and his weapon arm, the arms he was clinging hold with, was torn clean off. He must have been pulled in half, too from the looks of the mess Kain had jumped right down into. Irons had technically died directly below the subbasement entrance, so why hadn't Kain seen this happening? His yellow eyes could penetrate even the thickest gloom – vampires were naturally night hunters – unless of course, something had been in the way… Something so huge and dark that Kain had mistaken it for the night itself…

The subbasement was actually just a metal platform with railing suspended over a kind of cave filled with stalactites that picked up a green colour from whatever shimmering liquid was at the bottom of the marvellously deep cavern. Kain couldn't help but look down through the steel-grating floor to the strange blackish shimmering a great distance below-

-And in the water he made out the faint shape of Irons' missing arm. Kain smiled to himself, amused by the sight of the mans still-clothed arm bobbing around in the dark liquid below, suppressing a small chuckle at how ridiculous it looked. –

- There was the sound of snapping bone not too far in front of him and Kains' eyes snapped up to meet the source. Kain bared his teeth angrily; How could he have failed to sense yet another prescience? What was going so wrong for him to fail in one of the most basic aspects of vampire supersensitivity?

The … creature he beheld had a haphazard path of blood and tattered bone leading from Kain's position to it, like some kind of sick red carpet leading to the demonic murderer itself, and demonic was really the only words he could find to describe what he was seeing.

Birkin had changed since the last time they met in the sewers. He was beginning to look like less of the sickeningly mutilated man he was back at the time of infection and more like a huge demon with the head of a man. Its body was twice the size it was back in the sewers, a chest of huge, hard and thick it appeared almost as impenetrable as a wall of concrete. Most of Birkins' clothing had been stretched to such an extent that it had simply fallen off, leaving the monster clothed with only a meagre piece of lab coat around his right shoulder and a pair of unnaturally stretched genes around his waist. It still had one vaguely human looking arm, but Kain knew that no part of it should be underestimated; it had evolved to such an extent that Kain began to wonder if even he stood a chance against it. The demons of Nosgoth were much bigger, but Birkin had greatly accelerated in growth in recent hours. (Kain had read that cell division in life forms is preceded by a resting state. Birkin must have been in this resting state in the days between the sewer incident and the takeover in Raccoon and now was the time that it had finished resting and started growing at an hideously rapid rate.)

It had its massive back to Kain, but as it turned to face him, Kain shivered at the look of the head upon its enormous, monstrous body. It was completely human, utterly untouched by the plague that riddled his body. What chilled Kain the most was remembering that when Kain last looked the thing in the face, its whole right side had been covered in thick fatty tendrils pawing at the puss-dripping right eye. Also, Kain recalled shredding most of the monsters' face up with a strike from his claws, yet not a mark, not one single hint of a blemish was upon Birkins' pale, cream-hued face. It had recovered perfectly, yet it had not replaced the weak human tissue with G-virus enhanced structure as it had done with every other part of his body.

Blood dripped from Birkins' mouth, blood that Kain could smell was clearly not his own, but Irons' and he watched Kain wordlessly as it chewed down bits of the man, a melancholic expression on his eerily untouched face. Kain didn't know what to do. Sherry and Claire were the kind of women that would follow him down if he failed to come back despite the obvious danger of them suffering a similar fate. He had to clear the path for them, but Birkin had grown formidably, yet didn't appear in an aggressive mood even though it possessed the inclination to mutilate a man Birkin had apparently known well in life.

Birkin rose to its feet, standing tall on massive tree-trunk legs, pivoting to face Kain. Crouched, its huge wide body had caused it to appear a bit taller than it was, but still Kain readied himself for whatever attack would follow…

But an attack never came. Birkin marched his huge girth to the railings sluggishly, hauling the weight of the massive body giving his movements a tired edge to them, and threw himself over with a mangled phlegmy moan. There was no splash. There was no thud. Kain ran his fingers through his white hair trying to figure out what to do next. Vampires had a different take on carnage than humans. He was perfectly fine walking through a carpet of human blood and innards. Sherry and Claire wouldn't be. Heck, for all her talk, Sherry was still only twelve and defiantly wouldn't take well to coming through here. Also there was the element of danger posed by the return of the Birkin monster he had to worry about… Kain hung his head in the unsettling silence of the cavern, trying to think to a plan.

"Do you think he's okay?"

"He'll be fine, sweety."

"But he's been gone for longer than five minuets!"

"I'm sure he's okay, Sherry." But the truth was that she wasn't so sure. Kain was too confident, too arrogant to succeed on a night like this. It may have sounded arrogant to think as such, but it was the truth. So many had died on this night. What made him any different? And she let him persuade her to letting him go down there weapon-less too! It was his whole manner that did it. His voice was like dark silk and mixed with the penetrating glare of his eyes, he could persuade her into doing practically anything! Of course, she wouldn't mind it if he persuaded her into doing a certain something for him…

-Okay, now was a very bad time to be having dirty thoughts… Besides he behaved like the kind of man who considered himself way above such things… he may have looked nice but he wasn't even really her type anyway.

-And here she was referring to him in the third person as if his fate was already sealed!

Claire rose to her feet and Sherry looked up in a childish mix of panic and excitement.

"What are you doing?" She asked, jumping up from Chief Irons' leather swivel chair.

"I'm going to find him." Claire replied, heading to elevator Kain took beyond the secret entrance.

"Oh no you're not!" Yelled Sherry, rushing to meet her. "I'm not letting you leave me all alone! I'm sick of hiding and now we're together I want it to stay that way!"

"But it's too dangerous to"-

-"Oh as if I haven't worked out everything here is too dangerous for me! But I'm still alive all the same!"

She had a point. It was too dangerous to let her go, but it was too dangerous to leave her behind too. Kain had realised that a long time ago. Claire figured her heart and her head were in conflict and had been ever since she saw that first zombie back in Emmies' Diner, shortly before meeting Leon…

"Fine, you can come." Claire said softly and sympathetically. "But you have to remember that even though you're pretty sure of your abilities you're still only a little girl and that means you'll be especially easy prey for some of those monsters."

"I know Claire." Sherry said, trying to appear braver than she felt. "But I'm scared for him, even if he doesn't want me to be. I want to come."

Claire smiled softly, feeling warmed inside at Sherrys' compassion for such a callous monster but was more than a little creeped out at the relationship that had formed between the tiny child and that tall, powerful and no doubt ancient vampire.

The two fell silent when they reached Irons' sick torture/taxidermy chamber. It took them a few moments to even open their eyes fully from the strong reek of antiseptic.

"…Did he come through here, Claire?" Sherry asked her voice mildly laced with panic.

"I don't know sweety." Claire responded, but her voice was cut blunt when she noticed the large, unmistakable splodge of red on the grey ceiling of the tomb-like room. Sherry followed Claires' eyeshot to the splatter and gasped, grasping at and squeezing Claires hand tightly. They traced the circumference of the cold stone chamber around a large tatty wooden desk-

-To see half a body by a manmade hole in the floor. Claire raised her eyebrows and glanced desperately down to see Sherrys' reaction of disgust and horror. It was the top half of a man that had been shredded in two, and he was directly above the mildly dripping splatter on the ceiling…-

-…but something didn't add up…

"There's something strange about this…" Said Claire, frowning slightly. She couldn't work out what she was seeing that was wrong, but it was there, lurking like a bad smell of which you couldn't find the source of.

Sherry laughed sarcastically and let go of her hand. "He doesn't have a lower body!"

"Not that…" Claire grew agitated at being unable to work out what was wrong about the corpse and it showed in her voice, causing her reply to be more of a snap. But then suddenly Claire realised why Sherry had let go of her hand. She crouched down next to the half of body and put her hand up inside its ribcage. "SHERRY! What are you doing!" She didn't have time to pull away and so dumbstruck by her actions that all she could do was watch in sickned disgust with one hand clasped over her mouth as the little girl hand her hand in the body of the mutilated man.

Sherry drew out her hand again… But it was dry. Bone dry. Not a single drop of blood or bodily fluid was on her hand. She looked out fearfully at Claire and abruptly Claire understood what it was she was seeing that was wrong with the corpse: There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere around it. The ceiling was still dripping with freshly let blood meaning he had recently struck it while still bloodied, but here he was on the floor and there wasn't even a steadily spreading puddle beneath him. Sherry had put her hand inside and there it came into no liquid. Granted, there was a lot of ruptured tissue strewn about the body, but it all had a rubbery latex look about it, as if it were fresh but unbloodied.

"Did…" Sherry began. "Did… Kain kill him?" She looked very frightened and Claire held her against her pink-denim-clad body. The man had been drained bone dry. It certainly looked like Kain killed him … but he wouldn't leave a corpse lying here like this knowing full well they'd probably follow him, would he? "You're taking too long to reply!" Butt in Sherry, breaking Claire out of her critical thinking. Her starting, questioning blue eyes were painful to behold. They were filled with such a sense of fear and betrayal…

"No…" Claire finally answered, even though she wasn't so sure herself. "He wouldn't kill someone like this if he knew you'd find it, sweetie."

"Then why doesn't he have any blood left?" Sherry asked. Claire awkwardly smiled; Sherry wasn't going to let this drop easily.

"Maybe he found him here like this and drained his blood?"

"Then that means there's something really strong down here…"

She was right and realising this filled Claire with a new kind of dread. The body may have been dry but the salty metal musk of human blood wafted up from the strange basement exit. Something big was down there… And if Kain wasn't here, then he must have gone after whatever did this to that man, unless it dragged him down there, of course…

-Sherry was already making her way down the ladder.

"Wait up sweetie!" Claire protested, following her down into the subbasement. Getting to the bottom, Claires' boots splashed in something wet.

"Oh shit…" Said Sherry.

"Don't swear." Claire told her, but as she turned around to see what she saw, she couldn't help but respond in the same way. "Oh shit…"

It looked as if someone had intentionally thrown a bucket of blood across the entire walkway, laced with bits of broken bones and skin and at one point along the steel walkway there was a mass of tattered unrecognisable gore that must have been what was left of the lower half of the man, but it was impossible to tell…

"Kain…" Muttered Sherry to herself as Claire moved past her and along the walkway, checking over the area which concluded at another set of ladders heading upwards. "Did you do this? But… if you didn't do this, then are you still capable of it?" Of course he had to be. Such callous indifference… It could only be achieved one way…-

-"Hey, what's this?" Claire questioned aloud form the other side of the walkway (that was and upside-down 'L' shape, as far as Sherry could tell.) Sherry ran over to meet her, seeing her grasp at a bundle of red cloth rapped around a rung of the ladder exiting from the subbasement. It had been tied in a loose knot apparently, and had not been simply dropped there in a struggle. Sherrys' face lit up; it was Kain red-shawl like cloth had had strapped around his chest.

"Why'd you think he left this here?" Asked Claire, staring in confusion at the ball of red material, trying to figure out Kains' motives for abandoning it seemingly without reason.

"So we'd know he came this way!" Squealed Sherry in excitement while snatching the red cloth from her leather-gloved hands. "He put this here so we'd know he's okay and that he's gone ahead to make sure things are safe for us."

Claire smiled warmly. Sherry was probably right but Kain would have phrased his explanation differently so his actions sounded less concerned for their well-being. His actions suggested he cared a lot about what happened to him, but to see the man interact with them would totally devastate that theory. He only appeared gentle to Sherry, and that was because she was but a frail little girl.

Sherry unwound the red material and held it at both corners, throwing it over her head and tying the two corners around her neck to make kind of a little makeshift cloche around her back and shoulders. Claire chuckled. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood in it, with her large bright eyes and innocent countenance.

"You look real sweet, Sherry." Claire encouraged warmly, and Sherry blushed.

"Do you think Kain'll be mad if he sees me in his thing like this?"

"Not at all, sweetie." She smiled. "And even if he is, he'll probably be pretending to look mad because he really thinks you look quite cute."

Sherry seemed to blush even harder at her remarks, then paused a moment to deeply inhale, picking up the scent in the fabric.

"It still smells like him…" She mused, almost wistfully, her eyes becoming cloudy and dreamy.

"You are _way_ to young to start appreciating things like that." Claire mocked, before preceding up the ladder, followed by Sherry.

After travelling through a hole in the cavernous ceiling, the scenery changed very dramatically. They were now in a creamish-white coloured sewer chamber with the walls tainted with smudges of dark greenish smears. They had arrived on a platform just above water level, the exit to the area appearing to be an incredibly rusty and thick door that opened mechanically vertically like large chopping teeth.

Claire jumped down into the semi-treated green waters first, helping down Sherry afterwards.

"Lets get out of here." Claire said with a warm smile, trying to reassure Sherry that their situation wasn't completely hopeless without the assistance of Kain-

- Chips of grit toppling down from somewhere above them sprinkled on their shoulders. Claire and Sherry turned around, looking up to a balcony a short distance above them to see what-

-It was a man, only it was twice the size of any normal man, bald and in a green trench coat and built like a barn. They saw it from behind, but could feel the unnatural dark, evil, power-filled aura emanating from it.

Sherry threw her arms around Claire and squeezed hard, her face looking up at her, eyes filled with fear.

"Claire?" Her voice was a shaky and uncertain, and Claire felt much the same way. The giant trench coat man began to gradually turn and suddenly Claire realised she badly didn't want to see that things face. Her blood ran cold.

"Run!" She hollered. The both dashed through the ankle high putrid water to the rusty metal door, slamming on the release button causing the door to creek open mechanically. To Sherry, it felt like it was taking forever for the door to wind open far enough for them to jump through. Claire lifted Sherry in as soon as the gap of the opening door was big enough for her to enter and then followed through, crouching in and slamming again on the button on the other side to cause it to wind the opposite direction into closing. Claire heard a heavy wet thump on the other side just before the door finally closed tight and didn't dare to think of what it could be.

Sherry was terrified, dripping with sudden cold sweat and pressed up against the wall by Claires' gloved hand. The alleyway they had escaped into was just as water filled as the previous one, but instead boasted cascades of water exiting waste pipes along the walls. She didn't have enough time to wonder why the room wasn't flooding from the excess of water before her heart skipped a beat from a bizarre and unexpected tugging on her ankles. Her gaze shot down at her feet to see the water she was standing in splash fiercely about her. Claire too had noticed this, her fearful visage transferring from the danger beyond the rusty entrance to the danger threatening Sherry-

-But her attention was gripped too late to save Sherry from the finally violent tug from beneath her. Sherry screamed and then she was being sucked into the wall and out of sight. Claire yelled out to her simultaneously, but couldn't grab her in time to stop her from being dragged down into the drainage system into the bowls of the sewer system deep beneath the city.

Sherrys' screaming had disappeared and all that remained was the constant roar of the waves of treated water pouring from the wall pipes. Claire was dumbstruck. A moment ago, Sherry was standing here with her and now she had been sucked away before her very eyes and there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. Claire wanted to cry but knew that wouldn't solve anything. She couldn't get down there… The situation felt hopeless. Claires fight drained from her like Sherrys' disappearance had punctured a hole in her body and from it her soul poured, the entire amount draining from her in a matter of seconds-

-but a spark of hope remained.

Kain.

She had to find Kain and tell him what had happened to Sherry.

Sherry hurt all over. She was soggy all over, too. Climbing to her feet, she was aware she wasn't with Claire anymore and in some remote part of the sewage system. Her first instinct was to get to someplace sheltered, following the passage along to a storage room, but upon arriving in the icy cold chamber, from the stench of rot in there she could tell she was less than safe in here than she was outside in the stinking wet alleyway. She saw an ominous inky shadow swaying softly from behind a stack of shelves, immediately recognising it as the movement pattern of a patiently waiting zombie. It was very close by, but Sherry (somehow) suppressed her fear and focus on the ventilation shaft opposite the unsteady shadow of the inadequately concealed monster. It wasn't covered, and bracing herself, she dashed for it, ignoring the wail of the beast that was now behind her and forced her way into the shaft and up the abrupt upward kink. The conclusion of the shaft was a large, circular pipe of a room, which could only be described as a cylindrical alleyway wrought with rust and bits of slime and decay. Upon her arrival, bugs traced the sides of the tunnel, fanning out from a rustling cluster of them on the ceiling. Sherry didn't stop running. Those bugs looked bigger than your usual cockroach and she didn't want to hang around to see if they were changed to unnatural, dangerous proportions by the madness of the night.

At the opposite end was another open vent, and squeezing through, Sherry emerged into a very different room. This one was large and cubed in shape, not so rusty and with garbage lining the chamber. -

-But in the centre sparkled a large slivery disc, a disc with a strange picture carved on the front of it. Sherry crouched down to it, hugging her knees into her chest, a sight of exasperation leaving her tired lungs. This room was a dead end and it seemed that this strange silver emblem with the carving of a wolf upon it was the item this mini-labyrinth had been leading to. It was strange that one would have cast such a pretty thing into the waist disposal system when it appeared practically brand-new, save for a few slight scratches on its back. Sherry frowned. Three stone placed in a strange mechanism on a puzzle lock opened the strange door in Irons' office, and this had scratches on it too in corresponding places. Sherry picked it up, tracing its rounded edges with her chilly fingers and feeling that it was certainly very scratched along its rounded sides from incessant overuse. It wasn't as heavy as it seemed, but a fair, hefty weight that made her wonder if she could lug it around for as long as she might have to. Those stones Kain had didn't appear feather light, either and he had lugged them around for near-on two hours without feeling their dead weight build up at his side. If he could do it, then she …. well… she'd certainly try to do it, too. He'd be very proud of her if this were a major part of some mysterious sewer puzzle. She grinned a goofy smirk picturing Kain thank her for being so clever… But then snorted to herself when she found herself unable to picture him smile in kind appreciation and so the fantasy fell apart altogether. He just might say thank you but he'd say it insincerely, or break off into a totally different line of conversation, or give her a lecture on how she shouldn't have gone after the damn thing in the first place… Adults sucked…

-The whole room shook violently and Sherry shot up onto her feet. There was a dark mechanical rumbling coming from everywhere behind the thick rusted walls that Sherry didn't like one bit.-

-She screamed as the ground mechanically parted in two and swallowed her up and along with numerous garbage bags, she plunged down into the room below. Everything was spinning past her, and then it wasn't, and only the pain of landing remained. She was dazed and confused, the wolf medal clanking somewhere around her, and with a final whine, she passed out. She was tired, she was hungry, she was wet, she was lonely and without realising it she had been afraid, the terror of the night becoming so familiar to her that she had presumed she had simply become used to the carnage and the fear of not knowing if the next zombie could be the one to get you. She had been wrong. The shock and pain of falling and landing the sewage disposal chamber had knocked the last bit of sanity out of her and thrown her into a silent shock educed slumber…

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the ordeal for the small girl lying with her face down in the cities trash. At least she was unconscious for the poor luck that would befall her now, unlike its previous victim, Ben Bertolucci.

He saw his daughter fall and land and faint, yet he wasn't filled with the parental urge to whip her up into his arms and hold her tightly, and he wasn't overwhelmed by a sense of sorrow for the suffering that had befallen his child. Ask he stood there in the sewage water with nothing but emptiness in his heart and soul, the pulsating orangey G-virus eye on William Birkins' right shoulder started to burn into the tiny girl, commanding its increasingly mindless human host into sating its will. The G-virus wanted to make more of itself, to reproduce by implanting embryos into victims and having its beautiful offspring rip free from the frail human flesh and growing and covering the earth with its own spawn. The one that had torn free from Ben had been weak; it forced its way out soon after implantation because of the possibility that the humans that had found him would kill him, destroying the creature along with it. It had been prematurely born, and so was weak and flimsy, but the child was a much different host. She was the daughter of them, the mixed creatures - G-virus and Birkin, and they both knew without doubt that hatching offspring from the chest of someone who shared genetic material with the implanter would bare the strongest fruit. The girl and the vampire wouldn't killer the child either. They'd try to find a way to save her, in vain of course, because the only way to cure her required access to his 'P-4 Laboratory' to make the vaccine and Kain clearly had no intentions to go back into the very room William had awakened him from in the first place.

Birkin rammed the tentacle from his left hand down his unconscious daughters throat and felt nothing inside. No shame, no regret, just the G-virus and its mindless desires taking over his brain. It told Birkin smile, the once great mind of the scientist now little more than the puppet of the virus and slave to its intentions. The embryo slid in with no problems, and in a matter of seconds, his daughters' death sentence had been written. It would take a few hours to hatch, possibly, if the embryo inside saw no reason to burst free prematurely.

Birkin left that place, climbing the ladder out of the pool of garbage and sewage water with his unnaturally warped body still with the smile forced onto his face by the G-virus and could already hear the heavy footsteps of someone in the alleyway in the next room moving towards the sediment pool. The combination of Birkins' mind and the viruses will wished it to be the vampire, for his protection would ensure the safety of his implanted embryos.-

-William Birkins' will intruded for a moment into the stark callousness of the virus-mind like a knife cutting through soft, unsuspecting skin. The lightning quick slice was sharp, unexpected and extremely painful and cut through the heart like a samurai blade through a ripe tomato. Had he had his complete will, Birkin would have been constantly bleeding inside, but the virus impassively ignored the mans emotions, knowing that they would soon pass as soon as it would mutated onto the next stage.


	10. Part10: Kain and Abel

With his chest now bare, Kain could see the slight, thin shadows of discolouration on his skin that could only have been surgical scars left unhealed by his current state of weakness. Before, he had been too busy with William to notice the barely visible scratches spanning from his throat to his abdomen, but they were still there, possibly too faint for the poor resolution of the human eye to pick up, but they stood out to him like a thorn in his mind. To think the sadistic scientists had been tinkering with his insides while he lay unconscious and unable to defend himself… If he saw Birkin again, they would have to have words.

But now that he thought of it, he hadn't seen Birkins' soul in quite some time. Had he been in more of a benevolent mood (which was a joke, seeing as he never was in a benevolent mood) he may have wondered what had become of the mad scientists soul, but if it meant the crazy scientist would not make jest of Kains' hardships, then he would be quite happy to disregard him and pay more attention to what was happening in the now.

He had left the length of red material he had strapped to his body intentionally for Claire and Sherry to find and be told that he had gone on ahead to clear their path for them. Passing through a fairly uneventful room consisting of a hi-tech computerised sewage disposals system and a classical typewriter next to a large storage chest, an unmistakable, sweet scent filler the air around the small, red platform-elevator at the far end of the room: It was the musk of blood, fresh, still-warm blood oozing no doubt from hot, fresh, stinging wounds. It was fresh, yet dark, tainted by another strange and unmistakable smell… Gunpowder...

Taking the elevator down into the 'T' shaped narrow, dingy metallic hallway (Kain being at one of the two arms of the 'T'), he saw a crumpled heap of a man sitting directly ahead of him where the alleyway junctioned with a path to another elevator at the end opposite Kain, and the exit to the area. He shook his head to himself, recognising the figure as the young and naïve RPD rookie officer Leon Kennedy. His drooping head still wore the blemish upon his right cheek that Kain had delivered, but that was not where the odour was coming from. The blue clothing over his chest was tattered, matted in with blood, fresh and stale all fanning haphazardly from a hole around his right armpit. There, the blood and ragged flesh was so thick it appeared almost black, the hue of the blood brightening with the thin channels of freshly weeping fluid.

Before Kain even approached the boy, he could tell he was not dead, simply unconscious and had probably been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since the wound was inflicted upon his body but as he drew near, the boy raised up his head weakly to see what was coming.

"Kain…" He managed to murmur out weakly and huskily, his watery blue eyes still burning at the vampire with all the ferocity they had before. "Where's Ada?"

"I do not believe she is currently of your concern." Kain commented, finding it foolish that the young fledgling RPD officer cared more for the safety of the spy (though Kain had still refrained from telling him this) than his own life. The vampire grimaced (as he always seems to do) down at the young human before him on the cold, metal floor and to his curiosity, felt something more than blood lust stir in his soul…

"Please," He begged weakly one more time. "You have to find her. A woman with blonde hair started shooting at Ada… I got between them but if I hadn't then Ada would be"-

-"You mean to say you took the blow of a weapon not intended for you? And on purpose? Such selflessness will do a fool like you no good, Leon Kennedy!"

Leon dug into the hole on his right side with one finger bloodied in dry, dark crust and hissed in pain. He probed around, face creased in distress, until his finger re-emerged and the small metal 'ting' of a blood soaked bullet hit the floor.

To Kains' amazement, Leon then tried to get up. The vampire braced the poor stumbling human, clutching both of his uniform clad shoulders as he pushed himself from the wall only to fall into the arms of the vampire. Leons' body was hot all over, much from the shock of the wound as the shock of the situation on this night, but Kain was as cold as ice. Leon held his exhausted position for a few moments, head rested against the vampires shoulder as his cool body felt as if it were sucking the clammy heat from every sweat clogged pore. Leon wasn't sure he could go on much longer like this. Every step made the hazy world swirl in confusion around him.

Kain didn't know why he was putting up with it, but he was. The young, battered cop had fallen against him and hadn't had the energy to get up again. Kain was suffocated by the stinks of leaking blood and thick a suffocating cloud of human sweat that threatened to stay on him long after the officers' departure.

Kain cast his mind back to the last moments of his life as a human. He had been assassinated by a gang of hired brigands, you see, and had not simply fallen onto the blade, but had put up a considerable fight for his life. As the battle drew on, the amount of flesh the unskilled thugs had cleaved through his armour grew, despite his elite training as a nobleman, and he found it increasingly harder to even see straight. The killing blow was delivered to Kains' chest – he still bore the scar even now – and the particular brigand had struck when his disorientation was at its peak. Leon was now suffering a similar disorientation. Kain now new that the intense mental haze that had contributed to his death had been induced by his blood loss, and blood loss tended to dehydrate a human. Passing through the sewage control room before he had used the elevator, Kain recalled seeing a half-empty bottle of what appeared to be water by a computer desk filled with charts and notes. The only reason Kain had acknowledged it was because it was half empty, possibly indicating the drinker had died before he had a chance to go back to his desk and finish it. If Leon took this water, then possibly he would have enough mental stamina left in him to go on. Physically, Kain wasn't sure. He had seen humans die of lesser wounds, though Leon had proved with the probing of his fingers that the bullet had hit nothing major.

Kain helped him back to the sewage control room where Leon now sat clutching the bottle with his good hand. The water seemed to affect him much more quickly than he was expecting and was already getting his mental strength back, though he clearly wore a troubled expression upon his face. Kain believed he must have been still worrying about Ada, who had obviously abandoned the young cop but he cared for her safety nonetheless. Kain was going in that direction…. so he may as well… -

-"You wait here." Kain said ever coolly to the troubled cop, now knowing to fully ignore the part of him that begged for cruelty and malice. "I plan on travelling this route anyway and I shall find her upon it if she is still alive."

"Thank you..." Leon murmured feebly, unsure as to whether he should appreciate his assistance or scold his coldness but the cloud of fear, doubt and hesitation greatly stifled any emotion he was expressing at all. He played with the bottle nervously, tapping on the light blue lid with a finger, the skin of it dirtied in tiny dried veins of his own blood, much like the rest of exposed skin on his body. He looked as if he had fought a war and barely survived, which wasn't that far from the truth. Claire and Sherry would come this way if they followed him down, so Kain didn't worry about him much.

What did trouble him was the fact that the woman who injured Leon was attacking Ada, the spy no doubt sent to recover the G-virus, and was blonde. Wasn't Williams' neurotic wife blonde? Could it be so simple as a coincidence? Kain had emerged from the laboratory beneath the city into a sewer system – was it possible that she could be his wife?

Leaving the anxious Leon Kennedy in the relatively safe control room, Kain descended back into the 'T' corridor still stained on one wall with Leons' blood loss. The area beyond the 'T' corridor proved to be a bit more problematic than he expected.

The tainted, slimy green stoned hallways of the sewage system were sunken in compared with the platform he was on upon entering the room, but the unmistakable sloshing of water could be heard even before he saw it for himself. The whole entire winding passageways of this area was waterlogged with about a foot of dark water with a taint of green shimmering like dark velvet, cruelly reverberating about the corridor as if it had something to keep it moving... Kain gritted his sharp teeth and climbed in, hoping his hard golden hued sturdy metallic boots would prove themselves to be as water resilient as their material would suggest.

The water offered little resilience to a powerful vampire like him, but he still took his care in order to avoid splashing. Partaking of the blood fountains of Nosgoth promised him immunity to the rain but he recalled no mentioning of splashes. He found himself unable to take his eyes from the movements of the water, lapping at his boots like hungry, heavy dark flames. He found the whole procedure very uncomfortable and unsettling. He would not claim to have been frightened, but some negative aspect of his vampiric nature had just as much of a psychological effect on him as his positive aspects. His natural blood lust tainted his mental perception of carnage to find unspeakable butchery enrousing his appetite, but in this case, his physical vulnerability to water gave him the mental vulnerability of a slight phobia. -

-There was an unexpected thumping sound originating from nowhere, which filled his ears, like padded hammers on a padded surface. He didn't want to move quickly in the sewage water for fear of splashing or slipping and falling into the acidic touch of the blackish fire. He didn't get much time to spin around, however, for the source of the thumping landed right in front of him.

He instantly recognised the large hairy body of a giant spider between the size of a dog and the size of cattle. It was simply a giant tarantula less than eight feet in front of him. He'd expect this kind of thing from Nosgoth but had expected the scientists of Raccoon city to have a little more imagination… -

- Until the impossibly giant animal reared up its fangs and bushy front legs, launching close to the amount of a bucketful of hostile liquid poison at him. The animal had attacked on reflex rather than intelligence and the poison fell sort of him by only a foot. If he knew the scientists that brought about the birth of such a naturally impossible creature (at least by this scientific worlds' standards), then the toxins that were meant for him had some terrible parasailing consequence on the nervous system and their effects were possibly instantaneous.

He didn't allow himself to think about the consequences of his actions. Kain jumped on top of its large lump of a hairy body and pinned it to the submerged floor, the extra weight on its body breaking every one of its eight legs. Stomping unemotionally, under his boot he crushed its' head section, and finally it was put to death. –

- But he heard yet more thumps closing in on his position. This time he had the chance to see them skitter across the ceiling, and he sighed in agitation. Couldn't Ada have put these to death on her way through here?

Those they were large and intimidating, they lacked power and could only travel quickly in perfectly straight lines and so posed little threat to the vampire, even in his weakened state. Travelling through a small gate at the end of the corridor, Kain could see that there was a curious waterfall at the end of this waterlogged hallway… There seemed to be a door beyond it and a strange device upon the wall needing two large discs to operate. Kain snarled as he became aware that the function of the device was a puzzle lock. Had he been a human, he could pass through the waterfall without incident but he was not. This meant that it was possible Ada could have travelled through this waterfall and the door on the other side and he would be unable to follow her.

The puzzle lock was on the wall next to the waterfall, and opposite that lock was another double door on a raised platform above the waterlev-

- Something knocked against Kains' boot from below the water level.

He jumped back with the yell of surprise, and then snarled loudly like an enraged animal at his own cowardice. The prescience of water had made him jumpier than he originally thought, as what had knocked against his boot was a corpse, and a non-zombie corpse at that. –

- Kain was sure that he recognised the garb of the human shaped body floating face up next to him in the water. It was wearing full-bodied black S.W.A.T style uniform, like the assassins that had shot at and died by the hand of William Birkin. If the bodies were here, then that must have meant this was the very corridor Kain had been in literally within an hour of his awakening at the heart of Raccoons secret laboratory! The flood of water had changed the area sufficiently enough for Kain to not have recognised it, but looking it over, Kain saw bullet holes upon the walls and an empty case floating a short distance from him. It was in that case that the G and T-viruses had been kept, and though the case was without any thought or feeling, Kain swore he could feel a thick, black threatening evil aura emanating from it.

Kain barely took his eyes from that fateful case as he exited through those double doors. An overwhelming sense of vertigo had befallen him that he could not shake off until he had moved beyond his vision of it.

The next room was quite different from the waterlogged corridors. It was very large in comparison to the narrowness of the alleys. It was predominantly tall, as the entire chamber seemed to act as a bridge section over a large, deep and empty pool of still water at the very bottom. The bridge, which was currently at the bottom for Kain to cross, must have been moveable somehow, as the platforms several meters above him seems to be a similar distance apart. It was just as well the bridge was down; Kain didn't think he could jump that far in his current state.

After passing through that dark, echoing chamber, Kain passed into a cramp narrow passageway that felt as if it went on forever. It was reasonably well lit in comparison to the rest of the sewage disposal areas, but the dirty completion of the walls made it appear darker and danker than it actually was. But upon coming to the end of the passageway – another large pool, this one lined with piles of garbage bags, discarded mattresses and broken washing machines – Kain recognised that someone was lying face down on the heap of waste on the right side of the room.

"Sherry!" He yelled over, the words seemingly a reflex action to him.-

- But his cries caused _something else_ instead to stir in the waters of the sediment pool…-

- Something huge and green with scales burst from the waters with an almighty roar, and at the exact same moment, a gloved hand grabbed him form behind and yanked him over, barely avoiding the jaws of the beast snapping shut on where he had been merely moments before. He was on the floor now, meters from the giant bellowing Crocodile (or Alligator, but lets not get bogged down with technicalities just yet…) and from its breath wafted the hot stench of rotting meat.

The one who had saved him stood next to him now, firing the weapon they held trained in both gloved hands. It was Leon. He had followed him despite his condition.

"You fool – you were supposed to stay behind!"

"It's a good things for you that I didn't." Commented Leon, not looking away from his firing at the creature. It was hopeless, though. The bullets seemed to bounce from it hard scales and ricochet dangerously around the narrow tunnel. The cop finally lowered his weapon. "Man, this is hopeless…" But from a slow spreading smirk across his haggard features, Kain could tell he had an idea brewing…

The cop turned tail and raced down the corridor away from the beast, closely pursued by a mildly irate Kain. Though he could detect an ever-present smouldering fear in the young man, it wasn't to blame for his decision to flee. As Kain rounded a corner that the boy had just disappeared behind, he was greeted by a heavy gas canister clunking to the ground inches from his steel boots.

"Have you seen 'Jaws'?" He asked with a smile flickering across his serious expressions but he didn't feel the smirk inside – he had only done it to put some kind of ease into the heart perpetually angry vampire. This was one of the traits about Leon that Kain felt was a major downfall for him in this situation: He was much too kind to the others around him for his own good. Kain could quite easily tell that despite the tattered uniform he wore exceptionally well, he most likely hadn't served a day in his life with the R.P.D as doing so would have soon crushed that naïve, hopeful spirit of his.

"I can't say that I have…" Kain finally replied. He should really learn not to ponder such things during the heat of combat…

After Kain had moved from the path of the canister, the youthful police officer gave the heavy steel weight a solid kick of his boot, and to some wonderful twists of fortune, the corridor narrowly sloped in the correct direction, causing the canister to roll, picking up gradual speed towards the source of the snarling, bellowing rage at the end. It rounded the corner to greet them just as the canister reached the far end, and the monster pressed its long snout against one side of it, preparing to shove it from it path-

- Leon fired, the first bullet going wide and pinging from the floor, but the second bullet was an absolute bulls eye. The canister exploded, and boy, how it exploded! In a less than s split second the end of the passageway had transformed from a head of a giant Crocodile peering around the corner to push a large cylinder aside, to a cloud of red and grey smoke shaking the very earth beneath their feet and booming ferocious sound into their exposed ears. A second later, they were drenched with bits of blood and gore from the distorted animal like a thin sewing cloche being thrown over them. Kain was disgusted. It was not the blood, (obviously, seeing as in his youth one of his favourite spells was 'Blood Shower') but the odour of the blood that alarmed him the most. It was tainted with the same zombie-making disease that had befallen the humans to an extend that Kain momentarily flew into a panic over whether it could be transmitted into him through this exposure. Leon did not feel the same, however. Turning to the bloodied and bleeding officer, Kain was astounded into being stifled at the sight of the giddy, dazed grin on his face. The boy was admiring the brutally decapitated monster with a childish, innocent glee that he had never seen before even in the eyes of a vampire.

"Gotcha, you dumb shit…" And he grinned wide, exposing his teeth.

Kain progressed down the corridor. "You take a pleasure in killing that reminds me of myself in my youth."

Leons' grin vanished so abruptly it appeared almost comical. "I'm not like you." He half-spat, his natural good nature holding him back. It was astounding to Kain that despite the claw mark upon his cheek from earlier, the young officer had no more of a grudge against him that Claire seemingly had.

"True, you may not be like me now…" Kain continued, as they reached the conclusion of the passageway once more and found that an emergency lock had closed the door to the sediment pool when the Crocodile burst in. The lock was easily released with a control panel adjacent to it luckily. Had Leon really fled like Kain thought he would, he would find the doorway at the opposite end in a similar condition… He would have been trapped. Come to think of it, _THEY_ would have both been trapped! Kain hadn't even noticed the canister so he wouldn't have come up with that idea any time soon…

Kain continued his lecture with Leon. "You may not be similar to me at first sight but when I was your age I believe I was somewhat similar to how you are now, before my spirit was crushed and reconstituted in that of a real mans'. I was also born with a madness infected upon me at the moment of my first cry and even now, after all these years I wonder that if I was not infected with this madness, whether I would be a much gentler man…"

Leon didn't say anything.

"Of course, ironically it would have been far worse for me if I had, for I wouldn't have was it takes to be the man I am today."

Again, Leon didn't say anything, but seemed to be brooding quietly to himself…

The murky waters of the sediment pool were too high for Kain to wade though safely wit his boots. While Leon jumped in without a thought for what the waters would do to his open wound if he were splashed, Kain had to jumped across onto the piles of rash that lined the pool, clambering across to the lifeless Sherry Birkin. Leon waded over to her other side, but something next to her caught his eye. +it was a large, strange silver disk with a wolf upon it..

"Sherry?" Whispered Kain to the unconscious little girl. Next to her lay a piece of inhuman flesh as long and as thick as a rod, covered in a thin layer of mucous. Kain shook his head. It appeared much like something he had seen in Bens' prison cell shortly before his gruesome death… -

-_Gyrraaaaahhh_!-

Leon and Kain both looked up towards the sourced of the cry, but it was distant, from somewhere above them. It was Williams' cry, and both looking at each other, Kain and Leon both realised what must have happened to Sherry.

Kain and Leon both crowded about the child, Kain shaking her gently.

"Sherry, Sherry wake up. Wake up _now_."

"That monster has implanted her with one of its embryos, hasn't it?" Asked Leon, anxious for the little girl. "Just like it did to Ben back in the prison cell."

Slowly, Sherry opened her eyes. "Kain?" but gradually, her expression twisted to pain. "My stomach…" She said, rubbing her hands on the source of the ache. "My stomach hurts…and my mouth tastes really weird…"

Kain and Leon both looked at each other mournfully. This displeased Sherry.

"What's wrong?" They ignored her.

"How long do you think it'll be before they pupate?" Leon asked Kain.

"What?" Said Sherry.

"I don't know… Ben had been infected for seconds before they burst out so in theory she should already be dead."

"Dead?" Said Sherry.

"So they could burst out at any time?" Leon asked Kain worriedly.

"Burst? Burst from where?" Said Sherry.

"It is a possibility…" Confessed Kain. "I don't want to have to say this…"-

-"Then don't!" Yelled Sherry.

"But maybe it would be kinder to kill her now so she doesn't suffer…"

"We can't do that!" Protested Leon. "There has to be another way to get that thing inside her out!"

"What's inside of me?" Sherry asked.

"Very well, but if I hear it move violently as it did inside Ben, then…" Kain found himself unable to continue. Kain tended to be unmoved when it came to carnage and suffering, and for Kain to trail off like that… it petrified Sherry to the core.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with me!"

Her voice echoed inside the chamber for a few seconds… Leon was wordless and sorrowful and looked to Kain helplessly for some help. He couldn't bring himself to tell her she was most likely going to die and considered Kain superior in the field of honesty where it was not tactful. Kain moved his lips to speak, but only a stutter came out. Where would be begin? What would he say? He eyes were so big and full of fear, how could he bring himself to tell her?

_My God… _ His mind, the part of his he had switched off in order to rely on his survival instincts on this night, spat inside his head to him. He had forgotten how long it had been since he had engaged _that_ part of his mind… He switched it off in order for him to do what he had to do without his vampire nature screaming at him for a little deviation of bloodshed and misery against one of those human beings. He understood that killing one of them could greatly alter his destiny and thusly his potential to get back to Nosgoth. _Maybe… I understand that killing them could cause a major alteration in the time stream that could result in us not being able to return to Nosgoth for our vengeance against the Sarafan Lord but if it is the girls' destiny to die and you save her, it could have equally as disastrous consequences. Also, what is this 'being unable to look the girl in the eye and tell her she is going to die?' Not so long ago you would not have hesitated to look the girl in the eye and murder her!_

Something was changing. That's why. Something was changing and he feared it might not change back.

"There's a monster inside you." Kain told her, feeling a regal strength fill him once more, a strength that had been leaking at such a gradual rate, he barely had noticed it. "And if we do not find a way to destroy it, it will burst out of you and kill you."

Sherry was distraught. Her expectant eyes broke down into dejected sorrow and she screamed into Kains' face. Shoving past both of them, she ran off back into the passageway at an exceptional speed. Kain realised that if he allowed her to keep that speed then she may not be easily recovered once more. He tried to follow but was stopped by an angry Leon.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" He hollered. "And just when I thought you weren't such an asshole after all!"

"Let me pass!" Kain barked threateningly. "If she is lost then we may never recover her in time!"

Leon glared spitefully for a moment, but let Kain pass. "Just find her and save her, that's all you have to do for her… for all of us. If you cant even be bothered to be nice about it, just make sure you do it…" Leon was filled with a mix of emotions: Anger, pity, hatred, terror, pain, exhaustion but mostly he was sick and tired of everything this night had put him through. He now no longer had the fight in him to try and drum into the moral-less vampire why he was wrong. He preferred now to just let the vampire do his own thing, so long as it resulted in a positive outcome. Leon could now only hope, as the vampire rushed after the small girl, that her little emotional deviation wouldn't cost Sherry her life.

Sherry cried tears of bitterness as she ran blindly through the sewer system corridors. The disgrace was agonizing, Kains' icy words stabbing into her open heart like knives. She really cared about him but now he had torn into the heart he had won, totally unfeeling towards her. She didn't care about the thing inside her, infact; she had nearly forgotten completely what he had said to upset her so much. She just wanted to be with someone who cared. She had mistakenly believed it was Kain. Where was Claire? Why couldn't she have been there for her instead of him?

She wanted to go home… She wanted to go home right now more than she even wanted to survive this night! Why wouldn't it end? Why was it so hard just to get out of this nightmare?-

- She ran into someone, someone sturdy enough to bounce from them, causing her to hit the floor with a heavy bump. Of course, the floor was still waterlogged to it was more of a splash into sickening sewage water, and Sherry, being so small, fell in over her head, only to dash back up again, coughing and spluttering, angrily trying to glare at the person through eyes stinging with chemically water. The person did not move to help her up, or apologize in a vain attempt to make things better for her, but it could not possibly get any worse, not after hearing what Kain had told her…. Or so she thought.

He smiled down on the little child with cold black lips not quite strong enough to contain the encroaching saliva frothing out of his warm mouth like that of a thirsty animal. And in the light, he recognised her…

"Sherry…" He spoke softly, and grinned much from the glee of being able to say the words as finally running into the child.

Sherrys' frightened stare snapped up in recognition of the voice, and yet, she knew it couldn't be possible… she knew she had just dashed from him as fast as she possibly cold, and yet Kain stood here before her, grinning mindlessly down with warming, yet ironically cold eyes just like-

-her fathers…-

-Kain's eyes are yellow- this mans' are blue, just like hers, just like her fathers. –

Infact… his whole face looked like her fathers, the shape, and the eyes and even his smile all with the pale completion of Kain the vampire stretched over them. It wasn't Kain. It didn't look like Kain, yet it didn't look like her father. It was some strange blend of the two, psychically identical to the vampire but his facial features disturbingly different, like a nightmare where you run terrified and pleading to your parents only to have them turn around with somebody else's face in place of theirs.

She opened her mouth to scream, but even before she finished drawing the breath for the cry, its hand was clasped across her mouth, the other hand pressing her against its pale body. It even smelt differently from Kain… a darker animalistic odour, disturbingly different from Kains' clean, musky scent. Struggling didn't work, for it possessed strength even greater than that of the vampire. It observed her squirming with an expression of gentle delight, almost tenderly in its manner-

- Until Kain rounded the corner and interrupted the monster. He had separated from Leon, who had gone ahead to look for Ada and Claire and now had caught this mimic moments before it would have indifferently torn the small girl into pieces. His heart jumped into his throat at the resemblance he shared with it: _This_ was another one of Williams' 'copies' of him, as upon the left side of its cold chest it bore the third letter of the ancient Greek alphabet 'gamma'.

From Williams' teachings, it sounded as if all attempts to copy him perfectly had failed in some way. When he fought 'Beta' version back in the R.P.D, he was comfortable with the knowledge that the error had been something to do with the copies genetics for it to deteriorate as rapidly as William had told him for him to resort to experimenting with T-virus on it and ultimately creating the gore-sodden monster he had faced. This one too had to have been a failed project, and yet it possessed sense enough to hush the girl before she cried out, implying it had not deteriorated and appeared perfectly sentient. Maybe this time Birkin had infected it with a superior virus to prevent the deterioration? Could he have gone so far as to experiment on it with _his_ G-virus on it?

"Kain…" It muttered, smiling happily at him, Sherry now crying in his aggressive embrace.

"You know me, monster?" He barked.

The Gamma copy tossed Sherry aside into the knee high waters of the sewer as if she were not a living person, never taking its eyes from the vampire before it.

"…Kain…." It said again, this time affectionately whilst moving towards him painfully gradually. Kain noticed its feet were bare yet they were not burning in the sewer water. It wasn't a vampire. William couldn't experiment about vampire physiology on something that isn't a vampire. Maybe that's why it was classified failed? Then… what was it? And what had William done to it to make it different enough from himself not to burn in water and yet appear more or less like a vampire?

"Stay back." He spat. The monster did not comply, ever marching unhurriedly towards Kain. " I warn you, your countenance will do nothing to stay my hand!" It still did not stop. Kain backed away somewhat but stopped himself in realisation of what he was doing. He didn't need to run. He was the original Kain, the perfect Kain, and these were all experimental failures concocted by a scientist messing with forces he had never encountered before. Kain believed he was stronger. He always believed he was stronger, faster, smarter and _better_ that all who stood in his way, friend or foe, and though this was often considered his best quality (the vampires were fighting in a war, after all) at many times in history and in the future, it had proven to be his one major weakness. In the past it had led him ignorantly into the hands of his enemy as their most powerful pawn, and in the future it would drive him to destroy the one creature that could have made him happy for the rest of his eternal life, causing him to betray his race in order to satisfy his own whim to rule Nosgoth.

It was his overwhelming self-confidence that betrayed him in this instant, for he saw the 'gamma' copy smile warmly and passively back at him and assumed he knew everything. Kain couldn't have known why it was so pleased to see him… but he certainly could have made a wild stab in the dark. Why would any genetically imperfect clone be pleased to see the perfect copy? Had Kain really forgotten what William had warmed him of literally at the beginning of his night?

Unexpectedly, the creature, that appeared to be little more than a man in every physical sense of the word, sank its own claws into its bare and bruised chest, digging its long pale claws deeply into its torso, sliding them down from throat to abdomen. Kain bit his lip at the scent of the copies blood; it was tainted – poisoned - infected and recalling Williams' words from earlier when he addressed the gamma clone as 'Abel' (Kain strained to remember through all that had happened on this night), it was deteriorating and could only become perfect if it assimilated 'the original' using the G-virus in its' blood. Kain frowned. Why couldn't he have remembered this when he rushed to Sherrys' rescue in the first place?

"Kain…?" Sherry stammered, fearing what the animal was doing.

"Run." Kain told her as the monsters continued to smile warmly as it dug its whole hands into its chest and pulled its flesh and muscle in half revealing its organs, unrecognisable from the thick black blood that spilled out and mixed into the sewer waters like an oil slick.

"No! He'll kill you!" Sherry barked, remembering her weapon Kain had given her himself and clutched at it as much for the comfort of feeling the solid weapon as to use it against the monster.

The monster pulled back its skin even further until it wrapped around its own body, exposing its internal organs for all to see, turning its body almost completely inside out. It was mutating into something else, and the skin that had folded over his back, arms hand head had closed up, and now its organs took on a level of movement that was not possible in a living thing. Its' drooping intestines unfurled themselves into many thick massive lengths of whipping tentacles and its ribcage grew in size and girth to form an enormous vertical pair of gnashing teeth.

The intestine tentacles launched themselves suddenly at the vampire that still stubbornly stood before it and wrapped and coiled around every part of Kains' body, clasping roughly around arms and legs and choking him, wrapping around his open mouth and squeezing at his neck. He tried to bite down on the foul tasting appendage but the tentacle was strapped so far down his throat his teeth couldn't bite down on it.

Sherry aimed her weapon but found she couldn't shoot at the thing that had hold of the struggling vampire in its powerful embrace. She felt strangled and suffocated; he'd protected her from so much and now came the time to return the favour and she could do nothing to save him. She was so angry, terrified and disgusted with herself that she couldn't even force a tear from her scowling eyes.

From Sherrys' point of view from behind the now giant monster on human shaped legs, Kain was yanked into the creatures body with a force she doubted even he could have resisted if he had known his fate. He couldn't put up much of a fight, it happened so instantly. He was engulfed into the massive bone teeth and grasping, mutated organs and Sherry felt her blood run cold when she could hear it start to change him, the slicing of tearing flesh, the snapping bones and squelching organs being forced into positions that couldn't exist in nature.

She didn't care if she hit Kain, she fire the weapon at the back of the monster feeling that even the chance to free him would be worth any cost of injury to him. Kain hated the idea of surrendering to the wrath of the monsters and he wouldn't care for a gunshot wound if it rescued him from the walking cocoon of mutilated organs.

It jumped around with Kain inside, unconscious and wrapped and held in place with what was once the things intestines and contained behind an abnormally large ribcage. The tips of the cage were shaped to points and dug into Kains' chest. The tentacles fondled at the widening slit in his chest until they penetrated it. Kain moaned out in pain but didn't regain consequences. Sherry couldn't tell entirely, but the slimy tentacles seemed to be either pumping something into him or sucking something out…

From its back grew two huge arms, once they must have been the very arms that slit open the clones chest, but now the sprung from the back as thick as tree trucks with pale claws as long as human arms. With these dirty coloured arms it hauled itself along the sewer passage with them towards Sherry. She aimed for these arms, hoping to slow down its progress towards her, but all they seemed to do was mangle its arms briefly before the flesh grew back literally seconds later.

-But then she noticed something. Upon one of the walking cocoons of fleshes' sides was a giant and orangey eye, dripping wet with a thick liquid. She recognised that eye! The monster that had stalked her through the R.P.D had come dangerously close to capturing her once; she saw it from behind through a vent only briefly. It looked like a man with brown hair and one arm really screwed up. She sped off when it turned to face her, but remembered seeing that same kind of eye on the shoulder of the messed up arm glare at her. This eye upon the cocoons side looked just like it.

Sherry fired at its basketball-sized eye and it exploded in a shower of water like liquid. The thing roared and real back, massive arms whiling and demolishing most of the tunnel, the sewer water spilling out of the passageway and to Sherrys delight 'spitting out' its victim onto the now dry sewer tunnel floor. The towering cocoon collapsed as just like the hatchling that had emerged from Ben Bertolucci back in the R.P.D basement, began to liquidate itself after its defeat.

Sherry rushed to help Kain up-

-but froze in her steps when she noticed something strange on his back.

He was hunched over on the floor, clasping at his head in agony, his face hidden by the curtain of white hair that draped over his face and that _something_ on his back blinked with its one tennis ball sized eye. Ironically, this eye was far more beautiful than the one on the Abel cocoon and the hatchling. It was not the massive orangey oozing lump rotating wildly within its fatty socket, but small and glassy like a marble and like a marble, the green colouring surrounding the pupil appeared strangely below the surface trapped beneath the glass like surface of the eye as if pure magnificent colour had been trapped in a clear, crystal amber. This one eye rested on a rather plane body of flesh, but from that sprang several flat tentacles that slowly crept across the body of the vampire. Kain looked up at Sherry suddenly, and to her horror, he was _frightened_. He, who had slain countless zombies with his bare hands, now lay crouched on the floor before her with his savage eyes wide with terror. Something very bad was going on inside of Kain that Sherry couldn't see on the surface and it terrified her even more than the cocoon that had him not so long ago. She never lowered her weapon still trained on him, the dangerous piece of black metal quivering in her tiny little hand.

His breaths became quick and shallow with a strange grey viscous slime oozing thickly from the corner of his dark lips, dripping slowly onto the still damp ground of the sewer tunnel in a small grey pool. The flat tentacles were granted an unexpected burst of growth, spreading and widening across his back, spreading over his terrified face so only one of his eyes peaked from the thick red-ish mask of flesh, over his left arms, warping flesh into a diamond hard hide, sprouting a spike of bone from his elbow and a strange find of flesh on his left shoulder. The still bleeding area upon his stomach where the Abel monster had sliced open to insert his tentacles now widened itself, growing into a second mouth rimmed with dozens of large, cruel teeth taking up all the area where his stomach should normally have been. Upon his right shoulder grew an entirely _new_ arm, first the bone bursting upwards through his shoulder, ascending, forming joints and splitting off into three thick claws, closely followed by the same kind of tough flesh, creeping up the new-formed bone as if it were a snake gliding up a pole.

His right arm and his legs were left alone by the growth, at least from the outside, but it was the effect on his mind that was worrying Sherry the most. Kain had not yet lost his mind, and clawed at the mask of red skin with his one good arm, spasamed violently for a moment, then transformed in manner and poster, its action and moment becoming smooth and fluidic much unlike the desperate horror it express seconds ago. Slowly and assuredly it moved towards her, hunched over like an animal stalking its prey in the final moments of the hunt. She knew Kain was still in there somewhere, as for mere seconds it would break out of its inhuman confidence and begin its spasmodic flinchings once again, a muffled and pained moan of the vampire escaping the concealed lips, but the monster would always regain control, the teeth upon his stomach snarling out and shaking off the mind of the former vampire. It had her cornered and unless she was rescued by one of the humans she knew was running around in the sewers, it would tear her to pieces as Kain would fight the hijacker of his own body to stop it.

However as he know, the very reason Sherry had ran into the Abel monster in the first place was upon hearing the news she had been infected with an embryo that would hatch out of her, and that very embryo had been put in there by someone of blood relation to Sherry, meaning it was a lot less likely to be rejected and hatch far too early than that of any other available host. To the G-Monster that used to be her father, she was far too precious to be killed now.

-A deep hissing from behind Sherry, then the terrible squeal of iron bars being stretched into unnatural shapes caused her to spin around, not knowing what could possibly happen next. She felt too sick to cry, too sick to scream but what she saw made her want to die right there on the spot.

It was the monster that had been stalking her throughout the R.P.D, and seeing its face from the front, Sherry Birkin finally learnt that the beast was her _father_. His eyes, which were once a ghostly blue with a sparkle of quirky intelligence, were now blood red and burned down at her like searing hot spikes of absolute rage. His body was massive and as tall nearly as two grown men standing on each others' shoulders. His body was covered with a similar kind of diamond hard skin that had engulfed parts of Kains' body, only blackish in most areas reflecting its age and the punishment it had taken. Its one giant arm was still the dominant one, now little more than a thick appendage barbed with bone claws thicker than a human arm.

Its glowered shifted from her to the small in comparison Kain monster, gritted his jagged broken teeth and hissed, the noise twisted by the growths inside its body to change the sound into something less than human. The Kain monster barked angrily back, lunging its head and chest somewhat as if to project its sound and hatred. Sherry turned her head back to the Birkin monster in time to see the expression on it face become even more infuriated, its ragged bloodied hole of a mouth opening wide into a furious howl. The Kain monster became infected with rage too at the response to its threats it received, its deep, bark-like snarls becoming more violent, baring the fangs in its stomach, balling and un-balling its clawed fists and hunching over as if readying itself to pounce. Sherry sensed a fight was going to break out soon and in the heat of the mixture of subhuman hisses and angry roars, Sherry pressed herself up against the wall, despite her disgust and terror and slipped past the Kain monster before dashing over to the end of the tunnel, where there was a door guarded by a waterfall and a puzzle lock with one medal in place, a medal of an Eagle. Sherry quickly produced her Wolf medal and tracing her fingers across the out raised image of a wolf, her mind was drawn back to the monsters currently non-violent confrontation a shot distance. She envision two snarling wolves with their yellow eyes burning and their grey fur fluffed up snarling and baring their teeth at the opposite wolf to ward them off shortly before a fight broke out between them. Setting the wolf medal gradually into its slot, the roaring waterfall came to a sudden stop and the mechanism beeped its conformation.

The Kain monsters suddenly broke out of its animalistic warnings to the Birkin mutant and span around to behind its prey escaping through the red rusty door previously blocked by the dirty waterfall and made a step in her direction-

-but was fly swatted into the splintering brick wall by the Birkin monsters' powerful mutated arm for turning its back on it for that split second. The fight had begun and had begun with an almighty dirge of tremendous inhuman cries, shrieks, howls, hisses and roars from both creatures that threatened to deafen anyone in the area, including the diminutive Sherry Birkin. She could help but pause for a moment with the door ajar at the incredible battle that had arisen between the titans. The Kain monster launched itself from the crater in the wall to attack the Birkin monster clinging to the top of its immense body and swiping furiously at its face and head with its large claws in an attempt to decapitate it. The much larger Birkin monster flailed its mighty claw and one human arm in the air, smashing down wall and ceiling alike until its human arm somehow found the Kain monsters neck. The scene Sherry Birkin closed the door on was of her father, the larger of the two monsters holding the wildly clawing and scratching Kain creature in the air by the neck drawing back its colossal clawed fist for a tremendous punch the likes only a highly advanced G-mutant could deliver.

Sherry had escaped for now and made sure she moved quickly down the short underground tunnel of dirty and earth held up by planks and boards like a mineshaft. At the conclusion was, to her surprise, sky tram, which was a train that travelled on overhead rails. This one still had its headlights switched on, or maybe someone had recently put them on? Moving up to the entrance of the train, she looked down between the small gap between platform and train to see a bottomless pit of blackness beneath. She hoped his train was in good enough nick after everything that had transpired on this night to not fall down into that abyss of black night. She often worried about silly little things like crashes that probably would never happen to her in her life but considering what lay behind her, she came to the conclusion that dying in a train crash probably wasn't the worst death she could face tonight.

The controls were pretty straight forward once she got inside; just two big buttons, one red with stop on it and one green with – guess what – go on it, and thank god, too. She feared she might have had to feverishly hammer at complex train controls to get this thing moving while the two monsters abandoned their fight and decided to get _her_ instead.

Once the train had stopped, Sherry passed through narrow corridor after narrow corridor filled with a number of zombies, yet oddly enough, she found killing these zombies far easier than even seeing them was for her that the beginning of all this… It perplexed Sherry as to how the mind had desensitised her to such horror so that she could kill step over these walking human corpses with such indifference. Back in real life, she would be sickened by her lack of sympathy but now she was thankful for it, for if her own mind hadn't desensitised her to such a level of brutality then she too may have become one of the mindless zombies that stalked the night. Not once had she tried to picture the story of their death behind the zombie. Some of them had bite marks and ragged, unleaking holes on their stomachs and throats, so thick with decay they were and others had almost totally unbroken skin and could still pass for human if it weren't for their blatant zombie-like behaviour and cataract eyes. She even had the courage to search a seemingly freshly killed body of one of the workers of this factory for an impressive looking electricity based weapon thankfully with most of its charge left. Its working end was shaped like a plug; two prongs that shot electricity, and was rather impressively emblazoned with a black and yellow diagonal striped pattern along its sides that indicated danger to her. Its appeared crudely soldered together which led Sherry to believe that maybe one of the workers had made this themselves as a makeshift weapon… It was just as well she found the strange killer spark shooting device, as she was down to only ten round on the handgun Kain had given her all that time ago.

Finally she reached a rather long ladder that lead to a cabin on the roof, some sort of control tower (more like box) for something mechanical, judging by the extensive amount of fairly basic computer terminals on the opposite side of the room with only one black and white monitor at the workstation that seemed to be having a tough time showing anything on its screens. She smiled warmly at the sight of an old fashioned typewriter on a table in the middle of the small room. The R.P.D had several of these in various rooms and sometime they would even have writing left upon them by officers, sometimes serious reports and the like, and sometimes something not so serious they had forgotten to take out and throw away. Sherry moved over to the typewriter and pulled out the sheet to find it had quite a bit typed onto it.

'To whoever may find this; if your going down into the lab, make sure you have a good weapon by your side first. You'll thank me for it.'

Sherry frowned. This sounded very suspicious.

'We killed those green hunters but there could be other things down there we didn't run into. That lab is a big place. A lab worker down there called Monica was killed by something bursting out of her chest that was put in there but something we haven't run into yet. It got very large very quickly, but take my advice; always aim for the giant orange eye usually on the shoulder or back. That really gives them something to hurt over.'

Orange eye? Her father, the Kain monsters… all these creatures had a giant orange eye…. Sherry felt her heart flutter… Her father worked in the 'Umbrella chemical plant' and now close by was a laboratory were a giant eye monster was seen… Was this all connected?

'If your going down there, the place should have warmed up since we unfroze it so those monsters would have been given a new lease of life from the heat, but it also means that by the time you get down there, most of the emergency train controls should have unfrozen offering you an escape route. We couldn't take it because of the ice and water all in the workings.'

An emergency train? Could it be a possible escape route? It sounded like an underground lab. An underground train could take them right out of the city!

'If you find Leon, tell him I said hi.

Officer Kevin Ryman'

An R.P.D officer that knows Leon came this way?

'PS: The key is in the trunk'

Key? Trunk? Sherry looked around the room and found a large chest hidden in the corner next to the computer machinery. Opening it on its loud and rusty hinges, inside she found a small key with a yellow tag and handle on it.

"What's this meant for?" Sherry asked herself aloud clutching the key in her hands, feeling it was pretty important for that R.P.D cop that knew Leon to put it in a safe place rather than toss it aside when he was done using it.

Sherry exited the door on the left of the ladders she had came in and found herself on the roof. The sudden blast of cold air gave her a fright, but looking out to where the gust had come from, she saw an unusual sight. It looked like a big yellow train on the roof with a single light upon its front and with two large rails bracing it either side. It was on a huge octagonal platform on the roof and moving closer to it, she could see the entire platform was outlined as if it was meant to descend….

Next to his strange yellow transport was a narrow and equally as yellow control panel, with a keyhole… Sherry smile, and running over onto the clanging platform she inserted the key-

-but didn't turn it, for she heard a noise somewhere towards the back end of the transport that barely sounded above the icy howling winds that she could have _sworn_ she recognised…

She clutched at the spark shot gun she had acquired back in the narrow passageways of the factory and crept around the transport to see where the strange sounds had come from-

- to see a man in a thin white cloth coat and jeans looking out over the night, his back to her, leaning on the wall that came up to his waist and muttering something she couldn't make out over the eerie howling of the wind from the deep, almost blackish blue of the night sky that brought with it the smells of burning, decay and the occasional wailing cry of something far off into the distance.

As she crept hunched over to the man weapon in hand, she noticed something was odd about him… As she got closer, she realised she could just about make out the edge of the wall he was leaning on through him, as if he was not all there, faded out ever so slightly… She rubbed her eyes with her hand, feeling either they were playing tricks on her or she was hallucinating, but he didn't disappear.

Lowering her weapon, she felt no real harm could come to her if she tried speaking with the man, and approached his side-

- He turned to face her, and simultaneously a look of shock swept across both of their features as they recognised each other.

"Daddy?" It was her father, all human, and looking down at her with that large blue eyes with a combination of shock and remorse. What unnerved her father even more than the fact that she could see him in spirit form was that his daughter didn't rush to embrace him as he thought she would.

"Hello… Sherry…" He muttered to her, deep cerulean eyes filled with an apologetic, yet fatigued grief. The chilly autumn wind blew hard, bringing with it more burning smells of a malevolent Halloween. The brisk night air did not disturb the hair on her fathers' head as it raged through the emptiness of his non-corporeal body.

William sadly turned his head to the moon; great and full in the deep blue night sky like a silver disc, as ghostly as the scientist who beheld it.

"We're lucky tonight…" He said abruptly to his daughter, his almost colourless face unmoving from the modestly magnificent supernatural disc in the distant heavens. "Vampires are stronger on the night of the full moon: If it was any other night… Kain…" He trailed off.

"A monster got him…" Sherry whispered gently, feeling her little heart heave at the gradual understanding of what had just happened to her Kain. She thought she couldn't look her father in the eye without bursting into tears. "He's did just so much for me… but when I had to do something for him instead, I could do a thing!" She felt a sudden cold on her back, and appreciated that it was her fathers' hand. He couldn't touch her but tried to comfort her the very best he could.

"This isn't the end of the story, Sherry; I've seen it." William told her mournfully. "In the world we found Kain, I found more than I could have known." Sherry swallowed the lump in her throat. She could feel in the pit of the stomach the suspicion growing that her father was the cause for all this death; He was a scientist - he found Kain in another world. Her father was working on far more than medicines for hospitals like he had always told her. She didn't interrupt him. "There - seven years ago - I saw the future… saw the future of this world without Kain, and almost exactly the same thing happened as it did today…" He turned to her grimly, fixating her eyes with his own serious stare. "…up until this point." He swallowed hard. "Sherry… If you don't find a way of changing Kain back… Then I fear that Leon will be the only one who survives this night." Sherry raised her eyebrows. She had had her soul twisted to tatters after Kain, a man she trusted with all her spirit, told her that she would die from the thing inside her stomach and now her _OWN FATHER_ was doing the same! Her father continued. "There's a thing latched to his back that has control of him, my dear." He told her, trying hard not to cry himself. "The night of the full moon will give him the strength he needs to recover, _IF_ you can tear that parasite from his body."

"What happens to me if I don't?" Sherry asked with a confidence of voice that was simply unnatural for a chid of her age.

Her father stared at her, shocked by her clear tone of voice. "You want me to tell you how you'll die?"

Sherry nodded.

Her father hunched over, leaning his elbows on the low wall of the edge of the roof and ran his fingers through his hard hair that shimmered in the moonlight like rippling water. Because of his hooked posture, Sherry couldn't see her fathers' face. She couldn't tell if he was traumatized, surprised, cross or on the brink of an emotional breakdown. –

- He looked up suddenly with tear-filled eyes. A flame stabbed at her heart like a spear of fire, yet despite her instinctive yearning to apologise and throw her arms around her beloved Dad, she knew that even if this were the situation to do so, she would most likely fall through his spirit-body entirely. It was a terrible feeling to watch your father suffer and having to stop yourself from giving up that wall you've grown over your soul and just letting go of your control over your wants and fears.

- "Virtually every person who dies before their time has 'that moment'" William said abruptly, his voice laced with his sadness, that also ran down his pallid cheeks in think strands of tears of liquid-glass, the very blood of human souls. He hung his body limp against the wall, gazing down into streets rendered into nothingness from darkness far below. "There's this one moment…" He mused, sharing his ramblings of his broken will to her, gesturing slightly with one hand. "One… final moment of your life…. when you comprehend you're about to die…. that you are looking at the last very last moments of your life and it all comes together in conclusion. I have often tried to picture what oblivion would be like… not be floating in blackness but to cease to exist entirely and it always scared me… I often wondered how I would die… I often wondered who would be there, how long it would take… how far I would have come… what I would leave unfinished… and what that one last final moment would be like. Everyone had that last moment of life, whether they're looking into the eyes of death himself or not…" William turned back to his tiny little girl and spluttering, his words stammered and quivering from the bleeding of his very soul now cascading uncontrollably down his soft cheeks, he wailed: "I n-never had that!… I'm … d-dead and I don't k-know when it happened!" He slammed his fists down on the wall violently, crying loudly to himself, his strange tears, lacking the heft of human tears, floated off into the breeze, sparkling as they streamed off into the night and seemingly towards the full moon. "I don't deserve to cry!" He barked, his voice distorted by his sorrow so that Sherry barely recognised it. "Animals can't shed tears of sorrow, and that's what I am! I killed everyone, _EVERYONE _but I'm here! I'm a _SOUL_. _How can I be a soul if a damn monster don't have one!_" From the distance came the screams of a young woman with stopped uneasily abruptly somewhere off in the destroyed vast city, huge plumes of fire dotting its landscape as if a war had just gone on. "I single handedly created this…" He said, his voice low and twitching, his head buried in his leaning arms so that his voice came through muffled. "So many people… How can anyone have any idea what I've done without living through this? I can still remember the screams as the zombies first attacked, as if the entire city was shrieking out for help… Those screams lasted…. they lasted for only about half an hour… Half an hour and the entire city died… the unlucky few fighting on… You know, practically all but a small handful of the people who survive this night will be alive and watching when the bombs hit… Can you imagine that Sherry? Looking into the sky after everything you've survived, and seeing two stars in the night sky coming to put an end to it all, including you? It won't happen until tomorrow night, I think… Plenty of time… plenty of time… You'll either be gone or dead by then."-

-"How do I die if I don't save Kain?"

William didn't get up from his exhausted slouch, face still muffled by his arms. "It's because of him being in this world that the possibility of your death is existent… But if you don't change him back into a vampire by the time you get on the emergency train… you're going to die…" He didn't sugar coat it; the part of him that saw the point of it had eroded away with the bombardment of thousands of horrors over the course of the night. William looked up, and in his eye Sherry saw a look she couldn't describe, but it was a look that frightened her so entirely that she felt the need to speak up.

"What's wrong?" She asked fearfully. William regarded her only for a short moment before chuckling to himself, surprisingly.

Slowly, he placed one knee onto the wall, shortly followed by the other and stood tall upon it, staring down at the drop before him with a content smile upon his face. He was going to jump.

"Daddy - What are you doing?" She shrieked, flying into a terrified panic.

William responded with an emotion permeating his body that could only be described as euphoric sorrow. "I always wanted to know that last moment, and I didn't get it. The all want me to suffer…" He said, Sherry suspecting he was referring to the zombified victims of his terrible deed. "They all want me to hurt so much for all I've put them through; I can hear it. I can hear their names when they wail; I can see their deaths when I look into their empty cataract eyes and – my God – every last man, woman and child had that final moment I crave so much forced upon them in an orgy of the purest of terrors, purer than any fear any human being can ever imagine… I can hear them call out my name from the world of the dead. I can feel them press against the very fabric that separates the two worlds of dead and living in an attempt to snatch at me and claw at my soul for all eternity…" He shook his head. "But more than anything, I want to die all over again so I can have that suffering I so… _thoroughly…_ deserve." He spread his arms. "And need."

And with that, as if the act itself mattered less than the speech he had just given, he threw himself from the towering building into the blackness below, feeling his non-existent heart flutter in untainted ecstasy as drifted so softly, so gently down… coming one step closer to his repentance.

Sherry didn't stop him. She knew doing so would only worsen his self-hatred. All she could do was wonder herself about her own death that had been prophesied to her by her own father as she activated the transport and it too descended down into the bowels of the city. On the inside of the transport these was one single bench upon which she rested, mind reeling at the implications in her fathers' words. When – _IF_ – she died and her soul went to the world of the dead, what would the souls of those who died in Raccoon city do to her, knowing who she was? She bit her lips, discovering that the horrors of the city were her fathers' legacy to her. The Legacy of Birkin: This inherited nightmare full of the purest misery, the greatest human disaster for a great many years, and quite possibly for a great many years to come. This city and all the monsters within it, were hers.-

- There was a thumping – more like a pounding that shook the entire transport - that shook her very bones – upon the transporters roof, louder than even the deep and all consuming mechanical roar of the working gears of the huge descending platform.

Followed by a deep and gruff semi-human hiss…

"Daddy…" She whispered, still recognising her own fathers' voice regardless of its inhuman, savage warp… He founded pretty big now… She tried to picture it, but could only envision a black mass of enormous body consuming all light around it, like a dark demon absorbing evil. Sherry gripped the Spark Shot weapon she picked up back in the factory… would it be powerful enough to kill the monster that had taken her fathers' body once and for all?

She became scared, shaking her heard rapidly from side to side at the very idea of battling the monster of her father… but then she remembered something her father said…

"If you don't change him back into a vampire by the time you get on the emergency train… you're going to die." She repeated aloud. The emergency train was in the depths of the underground (and possibly massive) lab she was descending into… meaning it wasn't her destiny to die, at least not yet. If she went out there to kill the Birkin monster, then she was guaranteed she would survive… She hoped. The lock on the door released fairly easily when she put into it that it was an emergency situation and taking a deep breath, she exited the relative safety of the large yellow transport and braced herself for the fight…

The cool rough ride down was illuminated only by faint mercury lamps on the rails ascending into the tiny speck of sky that was barely visible at this depth, and disappearing rapidly. The transport shook with heavy thumps at regular intervals, leading Sherry to believe at first they were heavy, pounding, _marching_ footsteps of something drawing near, but it was just only a bump after all and Sherry let her heart calm down a bit before continuing her search of the transport… She moved close to the wall that was whirly past her at a moderate speed and stayed relatively away from the transport she had exited for fear on being dragged beneath its underside and mauled by the thing that used to be her father… She was sucking so hard at her lips with her nerves that both were folded into her mouth, her tong rubbing wildly against them until they became numb and tingling. She kept telling herself in her mind the words of her own father, - that it was her destiny to die – if at all- on that strange emergency train mentioned in the notes but oddly enough, the truths did little to calm her shallow, rapid breaths and shaking body. Her sweat was cold – a horrible slick feeling dampening her clothes, causing them to cling to her grimy body… She preyed she wouldn't wet herself when them monster jumped out on her…

- Something hard catapulted from the platform literally inches in front of her, a spray of sparks bursting and a squeal of unappreciative metal from the contact point and the object bouncing a few feet into the air before clunking to the grey steel floor. Something had just thrown a large and hefty metal pole at her from on top of the transport but rather than fly into a panic over how close she had been to dying at that second, she darted instinctively backwards, her eyes shooting to the top of the transport and to her attacker.

His left arm, one of the last few remaining human features on his body, was still drawn out from the lazy yet impossibly powerful throw of the pole he had tossed moments ago at his own daughter. He couldn't have been her father now, could he? His body was in such an advanced stage of mutation that it appeared to be one great black mass of impenetrable muscle and bone claw, the giant bulbous, grotesque eye on his shoulder large and full; apparently highly prosperous from its parasitic relationship with its maker. Some scraps of clothing still clung overstretched onto his massive body: His lab coat was now just a meagre tatter halo of fabric around his enormous mutated right arm, a right arm that was bigger and broader in size than Sherrys' own body. His overstretched pants – which could still fit an adult in their size – appeared more like shorts on the humongous beast, the tight dirty blue denim cutting into the flesh of its legs, but drawing no blood. The monsters was such in size and power that Sherry honestly believed it could not bleed - so much of its body was muscle, claw diamond hard flesh.

Chillingly, for all of its mutation, one area of its body remained relatively untouched: Its face. She found herself gazing painfully into the creatures' all too familiar features and aching at the prospects of causing it harm. Even in the dim light she could see, for some reason, his eyes were now red in colour instead of their haunting blue…. The same shade as hers….. Looking into his mournful red eyes, she swore she could still see her fathers soul in there, fighting against whatever pestilence had consumed all of his body except his head, and looking over his whole body, despite what he had become she was sure of it. He was tired of fighting the virus. That she could tell from the lazy, outstretched stance he adopted now. His face a visage of grief and woe, as if about to shed a tear of sorrow for him inhuman red eyes, she realised that when he threw that pole at her, he wasn't trying to kill her……

He was trying to warn her.


	11. Part11: Annette Birkin

Annette had made it to the computer room of the Chemical Plant with surprising ease. It was as if all the monsters she knew were running free about the labs since the city fell under the control of the undead were waiting for something, like a grand finale timed no doubt for when Annette Birkin planned to escape the facility with her husbands G-Virus.

At the time of the. . .. . . . initial leak, Annette's mind was in fragments brought on by the shock and sorrow of the death her husband that then received at tremendous after shock when she learnt that he had intentionally infected himself with the G-virus as his dying act. Because of this, she could barely tell up from down and couldn't grasp that as her world that she and William had built together fell apart, it was infact William himself who would deliver the killing blow and take out the city, but on reflection now, it did seem a lot like William to end his life in a way that was one huge giant 'fuck you' to the men that had been trying to take away everything he had worked for over the course of his entire life. Umbrella practically owned Raccoon City. It was a powerful playing piece to them, what with Arklay, the Chemical Plant and some of the shit they had going down in the Raccoon City Hospital. Even with Arklay taken out only a few months previously, it was still a thriving place for their bioweapons development programs. However, Umbrella had opted to do to William what they did to his mentor, James Marcus. Marcus was assassinated shortly after he developed the T-virus and the work (as well as the Raccoon City Chemical Plant) was handed over to William. Undoubtedly, the same was going to happen to William and he G-virus which was why after the Arklay incident (though it was a loss, it was the perfect opportunity to put someone else in charge of the Raccoon City projects and coincided nicely with the final synthesis of the perfected G-virus, ripe to pass onto young blood) William hired the Police Chief Brian Irons to protect his facility from spies. Almost all routes to the Chemical Plants Laboratories existed in the sewers, but could be easily manned by guards or obstructed in some way. The main route was from the R.P.D itself, though a sub-basement in the R.P.D's lower levels and all one had to do after uncovering the route to the sewers was follow the path, with the right trinkets to open the right doors of course. (There was a tram leading to the Chemical Plant that was locked with a puzzle mechanism consisting of two medals; A Wolf Medal and an Eagle Medal, exactly the same as the puzzle lock leading to the labs at the Arklay Laboratory. William was particularly pleased with that little example of attention to detail.) Brian was accepting the protection money but somewhere along the line he became overconfident . . . Two teams of Umbrella S.W.A.T made it through all the safety measures installed, got in. . . . . .. and took her William away from her. . ..

She shook her head violently and over-exaggeratedly, forcing her burning sorrow from her heart: If she dwelt on it, it would only cripple her, disabling her ability to do what she had to do. After all, William would have wanted her to protect his G-virus from whatever Umbrella spies were still lurking in the wreckage of Raccoon City and take the virus to safety. He'd sacrificed so much for that virus – they both had – and William treasured it so much he felt the need to take his own life for it (though in a dark part of herself, she knew that the bullet wounds he received would have been fatal anyway).

She had a memory though. A memory of witnessing something that she hadn't quite anticipated.

Through the thick, mind-altering haze of grief, hesitation, regret, horror and anger, she vaguely recalled running into him – the Vampire Kain – awake and alive and full of the divine power William had often described seeing in him. They'd taken him from his home world of Nosgoth while he slept a deep slumber scheduled to last 200 years (they had taken him sometime in the middle of this period) and had taken him to experiment on.

At first, William saw Kain as little more that a thing, a mindless cadaver with which he could perform his experiments and possibly enhance his virus definitions, but as time progressed and the expedition in Nosgoth became somewhat of a holy conquest, William began to change. At first it was subtle changes that only she (and a fellow Researcher named 'John Howe' who seemed to think differently from the other researchers) noticed. Silly things like William would occasionally look at him strangely when he believed no one else was watching him – a strange painful yet inquisitive look in his pallid blue eyes – and over time it progressed into more obvious things. The researches began to becomes seriously worried about William when at times he aggressively refused to be in the same room as the unconscious vampire, kicking and screaming and begging not see it, and at other times, John would find him leaning on him in an embrace like a frightened child in the night that had wandered into his parents bedroom after a terrible nightmare. They didn't know it at the time, but something in the Time Stream's of both their worlds had confused them for each other because of the sheer close proximity the histories of both their worlds were. Both worlds Time Streams' were like two rivers that had merged and could never be distinct again, and William and Kain were the ones most affected by this. Of course, in the time since they first travelled to Nosgoth roughly seven years ago, they had long since found a magic-based cure with the help of Mortanius for what had happened to them, but William had never been the same since. He seemed to be almost be in love Kain at times, but bitterly hate him also. It was difficult to explain. His felling for Kain were more apparent when William began to descend into a kind of insanity some time after they had taken him from Nosgoth, and when he got bad, he would scream things that didn't make sense, not even to him. One time however, he accidentally let slip in the middle of a conversation that Kain was the Scion of Balance, the vampire Messiah for example, something that this version of Kain they had taken didn't even know himself. It was Mortanius who pointed out to him that he had said it, or else he probably wouldn't even have noticed he said it himself.

Long story short, because of his strange illness (for some reason both the researchers who had accompanied William to Nosgoth and Mortanius refused to tell her just what he was suffering from) William knew things about Kain that even he didn't know just yet. He was filled with respect and admiration for him at some times, and bitter, unrelenting hatred at others. He had learnt to suppress his rage for some of the less admirable traits about the man (all of which existed mainly in this 'young version' of Kain they had acquired, which made it all the more difficult for William to deal with him) but his respect for him sometimes got in the way of his work.

This couldn't be truer for the cloning experiments they performed on him. It was a stupid idea to test directly on one of their most precious samples, so it was agreed to create copies of him to experiment on while at the same time perfecting their cloning techniques that they had failed to perfect comparison to their rival companies. You probably remember the tales about the Beta clone. (The original Kain was regarded as 'Alpha'.) It was the first Kain clone made and was an utter disaster. Within hours of being disconnected from life support, it started to deteriorate, its organs and skin turning to a thick, soup-like mush of discoloured blood and vague shapes of entrails. At the last minuet, William decided to stop (or at least slow) the degeneration using the T-virus. Whether he was using the Beta for a T-virus experiment or couldn't bear to let it die slowly before him like that, Annette would now never know.

The story concerning the Gamma clone however, was the most significant. Apparently, the degeneration in Beta was caused by gaps in the D.N.A sequence due to errors in the cloning process, so on their second attempt William patched up the errors in the sequence with his own D.N.A. Gamma clone, or Able as William 'affectionately' named him, had inherited some memories from the original Kain, which helped him become the efficient killing machine William raised him into. They became good friends, William and Able. William once described him to her as a less detestable version of Kain and in many ways he was right. When Annette met Mortanius, he told her that his 'son' Kain was an arrogant, pompous, self-indulgent sadist who had no hope of ever finding true happiness. She had met Able on several occasions, and though sometimes that 'Kain-like' personality came through, he was a good natured man (she didn't know who he inherited that from. . ..) with the most captivating smile she had ever seen.

Though he was William's friend, Able's function within Umbrella was their latest Anti-B.O.W (bio organic weapon) experiment. His vampiric skill mixed in with his training and the G-viral experiments William had enhanced him with made him absolutely unstoppable . . . Physically that was. . .

Sometimes, the only way you can hope to defeat an opponent vastly superior to yourself is if you wait for him to grow overconfident and make a mistake. Waiting for that mistake could cost you a lifetime, but it will happen eventually, nonetheless. Able's body was unstoppable but his mind fatally flawed. Able used the skill and memories he had inherited from Kain to fight the endless hordes of escaped bioweapons. (If not for Able, they wouldn't have been able to deal with half of the accidents the Umbrella S.W.A.T had been called to.) But the problem was that accessing Kain's skill and memories also had an intoxicating side effect of experiencing Kain's emotions in these kinds of blood hungry situations. Able became consumed by Kain's self-righteous arrogance brimming inside him and failed to request reinforcements when deal with a particularly large horde of Ma 121's - or Hunters as they are known - and it proved to be his downfall. He was killed in action and William's 'Able Project' was officially declared a failure.

The Gamma clone was handed over to a Doctor Celia Griffin, who was head of biomechanics in Umbrella and basically where William was in the world of bioweapons, but only for the development in Cybernetics. (You might be thinking 'what would a pharmaceutical company want to research into Cyborgs and the merging of man and machine?' The answer is simple. Pace makers are types of machine added to the human body to help the patient with their condition. Perhaps in the future and with the right kind of research, humans could be assisted by mechanical implants to a greater extent.) Doctor Griffin was a bit of a bitch and took great delight in the company handing over what William was quickly regarding as a son for her to experiment on. By the time she was done with him, his entire body was covered with synthetic implants. Blood was replaced with chemical nutrients and flesh and bone was replaced with thick, feeling-less armour plaiting and an impossibly strong metallic skeleton. Barely an inch of his body was organic. He could feel no pain. Now, he was truly unstoppable and her Cyborg bioweapon received much acclaim from the higher-ups in Umbrella.

The utter lack of physical feeling was slowly driving his mind on a downward spiral, however. He knew he could get hurt, he could even feel his own body existing and once he described it to William in a brief encounter with the towering, unrecognisable Cyborg that it was as if his mind was floating above the ground. If you have ever knelt on your leg long enough for it to go totally numb, then you would understand that it was feel as if the limb was not there, and when you stood in it, you would find yourself tripping over it, Though Able had received the proper training to operate his body despite being unable to feel it, it couldn't prepare him for the psychological cost.

To add petrol to the fire, Doctor Celia had been giving Able what she told him was 'medicine to deal with the physical transition of flesh to metal' but was something utterly different. The drugs were engineered to bring out the dormant memories of the vampire Kain stored within his subconscious in order to make him the best warrior he could be. Able was his own man with his own mind and his own personality, so to be suddenly bombarded with the memories of an insane, psychotic murderer as if they were your own would be enough to push anyone off the edge of the perception of reality. Kain's memories, his own memories and even William's memories mashing together into an incomprehensible mush were it's no longer impossible to tell who you really are. . . Able couldn't take it anymore and went on a killing rampage before being stopped by William.

This deeply disturbed William. Apparently, the illness William was becoming consumed by was something to do with him merging gradually with Kain as a result of the two Time Streamer's being unable to tell the difference between them and William felt as if he had just looked into his own future if his disease progressed . . .

Top destroying the Able Cyborg with whom William related to, onto the recent murder of the Epsilon clone (the very first successful Kain clone. He was identical to the original Kain in every way) which was allegedly cased by Doctor Celia, resulted in William losing his mind to terror, uncertainly and sorrow. He shared a closer bond to Kain that Annette knew at the time, which was probably why William took it upon himself to re-build Able with funding out of his own pocket despite the clone having lost a great deal of its mind when William was forced to destroy his Cyborg self.

Jumping forward to the present age, William had released Kain in his final, precious moments of life and Annette felt like a fool to think for a moment that he would have done otherwise. Unfortunately, at the time it hadn't occurred to Annette to attach a tracer into Kain to find his current location. The tracers worked very easily. They were shaped like a pin and used the hosts' own electrical field to send signals that the surveillance room (where she was located) picked up. Problem was that Able was mainly a G-virus monster, and when G-virus monsters died, they tended to liquefy themselves. William used to joked about that: 'self cleaning mutant; leaves only the minty-fresh scent of pine' but in truth it was a major headache if the tracer was one that ran on the hosts electrical field. Once the monster had dissolved away, the tracer couldn't transmit a signal and if you weren't looking when the signals stopped, you'd utterly miss its last location. The Abel had stopped transmitting signals about half an hour ago (as far as she knew. That was when she last checked its progress, and it was somewhere in the sewers leading to this facility) and she had begun to wonder what was capable of killing the beast. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that it must have been Kain, the only man powerful enough who could beat the thing without using a tank. She was starting to wish she had the initiative to have lodged a tracer beneath the skin of the vampire when she ran into him when William was . . . . . taken from her.

So now she waited patiently in the surveillance room for some signs that Kain was approaching the lab once more, several of the cameras utterly blacked out, one or two showing nothing but aggressive static, but with a decent few still transmitting. (The system was very new, so she guessed it might have been possible for William to have destroyed the cameras while he still had a few shreds of human intelligence left within him.) So far, things had been fairly uneventful, just the occasional 'Re3' (Licker, as they were known) lurking around in the shadows. She smiled. William had crafted those animals. They were skinless and their brain was exposed, and they were utterly deaf, but still they were stealthy and very powerful if you got yourself into just the right position for them to deliver a killing blow. Still, they didn't satisfy William enough so he enhanced them slightly. These fairly new Lickers seemed to hang around the lab mostly. Instead of the three claws on each hand, they had long scythe-like appendages and their exposed muscle was hardened and greenish in colour to increase both their attack and defence. Aesthetically though, the old-fashioned Lickers were the most appealing.-

- Annette felt a shudder through her tired bones, followed by a mechanical whining from somewhere far above the facility. The whole room vibrated gently as the roar of machinery gradually increased in volume as it descended towards the underground lab. Someone was using the transport lift to get into the facility. It had to be a spy, hadn't it? Or was it Kain coming back for answers at to how to get back to Nosgoth? It was then that she remembered there was one camera operational on the Transport descending into the laboratory. She hurried over to it, not suspecting for a moment what she would see.

She threw her slender fingers over her face in shock. It was Sherry! She was wandering precariously along the side of the Transport, an all too adult look of stern concentration on her little daughters' face that sent chills up Annette's spine. What must she have seen to be that hard of heart already? Annette Birkin had sent her to hide at the R.P.D because she was confident that the cops would have what it took to hold of the zombies long enough to launch an evacuation. If she could get his far, it meant the R.P.D was crawling with monsters just like every other corner of the city. Annette could feel her tears dribbling down over her cold fingers: The things - the horrible, terrible things her little baby girl must have seen! What was she doing all the way down –

- Something long, hard and metallic catapulted from the platform, throwing her tiny daughter backwards from the shock of it. Annette felt her throat close up with anxiety and all she could do was watch.

Sherry looked up to the top of the Transport – the origin of the flying pole- and to the shock and terror of Annette, she saw the face of her husband atop a hideously deformed, massive monstrous build looking down mournfully at his own daughter.

"Oh Jesus. . . ." She wailed helplessly through her hands clasping desperately to her pale, crying face. "Let this be just another terrible nightmare. . . " Ever since she found William's dieing body she had been plagued with terrible nightmares of his distorted freakish body, so disturbingly so that she had been forcing herself to stay awake but found herself unable to stop dropping off unannounced if she took a quick break in a secure room. She prayed that this was once of those occasions. She prayed that she had dozed off while watching the monitors, but no such luck. This was actually happening. Her little baby was going to die and it was all her fault!

The Birkin monster started to change. Its head melted down into the thick mass of hideous muscle that was its chest and atop its powerful frame grew a new and far more demonic head. Its silver colour gave it the appearance of metal, though Annette knew that made no logical sense. It's eyes were a far more threatening shade of red that that of her husbands battered features that rested on top of the body literally moments before. A gaping black hole filled with distorted bone teeth heaved itself out of its chest area and took its place as a mouth at the bottom of the demons cruel face, and Annette knew at that moment that her husband had given up fighting the G-virus and it now had full control of its titan body.

I leapt from the top of the Transport, landing inches before Sherry in an earth-shattering thump she swore she could feel in her bones all the way from the elevator shaft. It slowly rose from its crouch, brimming with a sinister, formidable, unholy power as if drawing out Sherrys' fate deliberately to fill the small child with fear. Sherry backed off and fired the strange weapon she had in her hands and the creature was temporarily engulfed with a burst of electricity. It appeared to work for a few seconds, the massive black demon hugging its chest, but it snarled into the air as if calling upon the gods for strength, and resumed to launch its attack.

Annette found couldn't watch and threw her tortured sight from the screen, but the sudden movement mixed with intoxicating terror and aching fatigue made her nauseous and she threw up onto the cold steel floor of the sterilised facility. She chocked and spluttered on the acidic liquid for a second but forced the remnants of the vomit back down into her stomach and forced her gaze onto the monitor.

Sherry was still alive and fighting the beast that was once her father with her electric weapon. Annette gazed in weary amazement as she realised that Sherry was holding her own against the monster considerably well . . . The black mass of power swiped its massive bone claws at the tiny girl that wasn't even half its size and she rolled from the path of attach into a crouch at its size and fired her weapon, bracing herself to the recoil as if she had experience with handling weapons. She was strong and brave and for a few second, Annette though that for a moment, maybe she wasn't her little girl . . . . . Where in the hell did she learn to move like that?-

- Something on a monitor on the opposite side of the wall of surveillance screens moved in an unusual way that indicated to her trained eye that it was neither a Licker nor was it a zombie. The monitor displayed a grey, dreary service tunnel that's end was obscured with an inky black darkness. Something lurched forward from the fog of darkness into gradual view like a ghost materialising onto the monitor's screen. The lack of audio was haunting as its walk, hard and sturdy, swayed from side to side inhumanly. The creature continued to emerge and the image became clearer; Annette could see that a mutilated third arm with three thick claws at the top was protruding from the monsters back. Its torso was covered in a network of hard callous sewiny-like material that reached up its neck and had moulded entirely over its once human face. The lack of a face made the creatures' appearance seem even more inhuman than if the hard flesh callous hadn't formed and had left what the virus had done to his face for all to see. Annette vaguely remembered some old tales she heard from William and John that in the old times, masks were considered unholy as wearing them was a rejection of your humanity and the face god intended for you. The virus callous across its face was struck her as the symbolic and complete rejection of gods design.

The creature marched ever onwards as if in slow motion and further into view and Annette could see it had white hair protruding from the mask-like growth across its face. . . Able had white hair, didn't he? But the Abel beast had been killed; the tracker wouldn't have stopped sending signals if it hadn't (and those tracers lodge themselves beneath the skin). She remembered she guessed that Kain would have been the most likely creature to put him down. . . but what if the Abel monster had the initiative to ensure its survival by infecting its closest genetic relation before its death?

"Oh my god. . ." The monster that could only have been the infected vampire Kain now lurched so close to the camera that Annette swore she could feel its eyes on her even though its eyes were obscured from view. It could still see somehow. . . she just _knew_ it. It stopped right before the camera, turning its non-existent gaze eerily steadily hers. She froze: it could see her, it could feel her terror: it _had_ to! It was a vampire-monster; it didn't have to follow the rational laws of science: that much she understood. It was plotting her downfall; that's what the vampire Kain did and even in this ghastly, revolting shape that leered at her through the camera lens was still the sadistic taint to screw with his victims' minds. –

- The picture disappeared without warning into an incomprehensible burst of static. Annette let out a puff of relief but knew inside that this was hardly the time to be relaxing. It was going to get her - shit - it was even inside the facility! And Kain had a reputation for drawing out the inevitable fate of his helpless victim to purify their blood to its very finest of flavours. That was all he really cared about. That and the usual things sadistic murderers cared about; the thrills of seeing the life drain from the pleading, fearful eyes of the victim and so on. . . William watched Kain sleep a lot but she only did it once. It was strangely thrilling, like watching a Lion sleep without the protection of bars. . . A very attractive and sexy, dangerous Lion. . . . She compared her memories of watching him sleep with what she felt when she ran into him. Everyone seemed more beautiful and innocent when they slept and Kain was no exception. . . Running into such a powerful animal like that in the flesh. . . she thought she was going to die.

Her attention turned back to her daughter Sherry and was startled to see in time the monster that was once her husband leap onto the walls of the Transport and disappear from view as the platform descended ever downwards. She had driven it off, or it had picked up on something beyond the humans' sensation and gave up on this stalemate. She was safe for now, but Annette climbed shakily to her feet, feeling her maternal self click back into action. She thought her soul had withered and died in the carnage of the first wave of attacks, know her beloved William had caused so much hurt, not only to the entire innocent city, but to herself and her child too. Seeing Sherry survive that fight awoke a flame within her, a flame she would use to intercept her child and take the emergency train with her and the G-virus sample out of this nightmare. At first, seeing Sherry descend into the pit of hell that was this facility filled her with fear for her only precious daughter but seeing her take on William and fend him off. . . Perhaps her newfound skills would keep her safe long enough for Annette to find her and take her away from all this hell, but not after blowing Umbrella's precious facility sky high.


	12. Part12: Defiance

Claire Redfield found herself believing the painful lump in her throat would burst kill her when she first saw the state of the Transport into the laboratory: almost as if a full scale war had broken out: the claw indentations ripped across the thick steel floor appeared as if the floor was torn like some kind soft, supple clay or even hot and living flesh. The large, yellow train-like transport had thick black patches burned into the side caused by some kind of flamethrower or something. . . What the hell had happened here? Any one of the others could have been on here when – whatever happened – happened. Was it Leon and that Ada woman he had mentioned? Had Kain and Sherry come through this point? Claire bit her lip at that thought. . . The state of the sewer corridor that lead to the abandoned Warehouse that held the Transport. . . It had been almost obliterated, only a few gaps in the wall of rubble allowing her passage to the secrets beyond. If Sherry and Kain had come through here, then either they encountered the creature that had caused such decimation, or it was closely in pursuit of them, and the state of the war-torn Transport confirmed that disastrous notion. Claire felt sick at picturing what could have been the scene; Sherry locked away within the Transport while Kain fought with the unimaginable beast outside as the machine descended ever onwards into the bowels of the facility. It was impossible to tell who had won: there were no broken bodies, human or otherwise - no spilt blood. . . other than the evidence of an obvious struggle, there was nothing indicating to Claire that there had been a battle with a biological killing machine. If a powerful bioweapon was indeed confronted here, then where were all the corpses? Where was all the blood and carnage? The fight couldn't have moved on elsewhere: the ride down the shaft lasted a full five minuets – more than enough time for a clear winner to prevail.

Claire held the black walky-talky that Leon had given her in her fingerless gloved hand, gazing at it precariously. She could call him. . . ask him if he knew what had gone on there, but she was afraid. What if she got no response? She'd fear the worse, but the chances were that he would be too busy to answer her right now. Since they both first delved into the sewers, the creatures inside had increased in numbers power. Living zombies were now a rare sight, as whoever had gone ahead – Leon or Kain – had cleared the path for her. However the trail of corpses had caused a few carrion-hungry creatures to intercept the slaughter. It must have been difficult for them to find a meal in a city where the dead become living again in a surprisingly short duration. Claire shivered at the thought that at one point, the zombies numbers were so thin that life could go on in the town without anyone being any the wiser of their presence, but as the victims of the undead joined their ranks, their numbers must have snowballed out of control, causing a sudden wave of the undead to appear as if from nowhere and take the still relatively significant number of the remaining living into the septic, dripping jaws. It couldn't have lasted long. . .

That all seemed like a distant and ancient memory now. . . Though Claire had arrived at nightfall and so had missed the initial takeover, it felt within her waters that this night had lasted an eternity, like she had been fighting the undead for as long as she could remember and the Claire Redfield she knew from her life before she walked into this apocalypse was a vague and fond ancient memory, like recalling the tattered fragments of ones early childhood. . .

Alone now, with the prospect of never seeing her friends alive again, Claire felt truly exposed and vulnerable for the first time since she left the R.P.D. She had followed the Transport down into Umbrella's secret facility, a place that reeked of an ungodly evil aura. Since encountering Kain, she had learnt to trust her more irrational senses, such as the overwhelming feelings of anxiety and disaster this icy, steel facility gave her. She didn't know why, but she just knew this was where it all began. The city was filled with the victims of a zombie-making virus wreaked of death and decay, yet in-between the bursts of revulsion and terror, Claire occasionally and unexpected experienced bursts of grief and sorrow through it all. She never really thought about it directly, but this city was little more that a giant graveyard and held the same melancholic sentiments. So much unimaginable suffering had gone on in this city, yet throughout the entirety of the night she had neglected this, focusing more on the horror of the now, of the suffering the survivors were forced to face as the broken, mutilated bodies of their friends and family attacked them and tore them apart. In fact, the true horror of this night was not the experiences of the survivors as the fought to escape the city of the dead, but the stories contained in the minds of the zombies as they shambled through the night like lost souls searching solemnly for an escape from the rotting flesh that incarcerated their souls within a body that they could no longer control. The pain, the horror, the true depths of suffering brought about by this night was theirs, and not the property of the few living survivors. Claire felt ashamed to think that she, when she first entered the city and ran into Leon, had it worse than those who had died in the opening act. The very existence of Kain and his supernatural abilities proved to her that human souls could be trapped within the flesh of undead organisms, and zombies were no exception.

This cold and emotionless laboratory was the womb from which the virus and disease wretched free unto the world and the surrounding innocents. It was like a cancer burred deep within the heart of a happy and healthy animal that had devoured the creature to the peak of its prosperity. . . And from the newfound knowledge Claire had received in the form of compromising documents found within the R.P.D (anyone would think that Brian Irons had the sense not to write incriminating evidence into his own diary, considering that he was the chief of police), it seemed to her that Sherry's own parents had more to do with it all than she could ever have guessed. Kain too informed of her a connection with Sherry's father back when they first met, he even went on to tell her that he was infected with a virus. She wondered what kind of virus was contained in the body of the Vampire and why it hadn't done to him what it had done to all the other creatures she had encountered in this night.

There was one in particular that worried her: The trench coat monster, or Mr. X as she had come to refer to him as. He looked like a man in many ways, not like all the other monsters. Except he was twice as tall as she was and built impossibly big, each perpetually balled fist the size of a human head. It was bald, but its eyes were strange. . . like it had no iris or pupils, like the zombies only much more powerful and intimidating. It wore a large muddy green trench coat, the sort of colour one associated with the army, but the thing that frightened her the most was the way it behaved. It was far more intelligent than a zombie, who would shamble hungrily in the general direction of sound or movement. Mr X marched titanic thumping steps single-minded in the direction of human prey, climbing up balconies and even at one point demolishing a wall to intercept its target, which seemed to be her at this moment in time. But at one point she wondered who would go out of their way to make and deploy this into the R.P.D to track her down. It must have been Umbrella for some reason, but what chilled her was how similar it was to Kain.

At first glance, one would laugh at this statement: How can a sentient Vampire be anything like this mindless man-made monster? Claire had found documents. Those documents said that Kain was the only Vampire recorded to have been made by another human, and not by a fellow Vampire. It seemed that he had been crafted by some kind of necromancer, who then orchestrated it so that Kain would feel compelled to eliminate the necromancers chosen target. Kain was mentally inclined to stop at nothing to achieve what he thought was his revenge. . . And that scenario seemed all too alike to how a scientist would create a monster like Mr. X. X had been created to intercept and eliminate human threats to the company. Just as Mr. X was created by the hand of man to serve him as an unstoppable killing machine, so too had Kain been created. The addition of a virus to Kain's blood made her wonder how truly trustworthy he was. Was he now no longer a Vampire, but an Umbrella-owned bioweapon designed to carry out a specific task? Whether Kain realised he was doing their will or not was irrelevant; he had been made to play the pawn once before and - judging by his character - he was the kind who never learned.

Claire pondered this as she delved further into the emotionless mechanical laboratory. She searched the floor the Transport had dropped her off in and found a security office. Inside it was fairly uneventful, desks covered in stationary, computer cables and folders full of documents, but what really caught her eye was a small looking disk that lay innocently on a sheet-less bed to one side of the room. The label read 'M.O. Disk'. She didn't know what it was for, but took it with her anyway just if she needed it.

Beyond the area where the Transport had concluded its decent, was a massive chamber with three bridges that connected at a centre pillar which housed the main fuse for the lab, leading to two areas of the main lab – east and west (the third bridge was the one she was on. an unmarked that lead to the Transport and a locked emergency elevator that she couldn't get into without some kind of master key.) Moving along the bridge hued a strange reddish colour from the electric lights, Claire hazarded a look downwards to see the chamber lead down into an inky blackness: it was impossible to tell how high up she was, and looking upwards offered the same effect. This facility was impossibly vast and Claire dared to this that it might even rival the city in its size. According to some inconspicuous signs she had a brief glance at as she departed from the Transport, this was the main section of the laboratory. It held the emergency train and something called the 'P4-Laboritory', which according to the sign was the main laboratory for the lead researcher (and she assumed the boss of) this lab complex. There were many other sections to the facility, but Claire felt shed only need to stick in this area to find a way onto the emergency train, and hopefully, Leon, Ada, Sherry and Kain would all be well enough to join her. –

- Her walky-talky beeped. Leon was calling her. She snatched at it and activated it, the sound quality poor and crackling but relived to be getting a signal on it at all despite being deep beneath the crust of the city surface.

'Claire, do you copy?' came the ironically professional comment of Officer Leon; he wasn't an R.P.D officer anymore, seeing as the R.P.D no longer existed, but that didn't stop him from trying to be like a cop. His voice sounded rough and exhausted, but he hadn't given up yet. At least he was still alive.

"Yeah." Replied Claire. It may not have been the best response in the world, but he wouldn't have contacted her unless he had something important to say.

'I'm inside Umbrella's secret research facility. What is your location?'

Claire's heart soared with hope. "I'm there too! I just came down in the Transport!"

'Ada and me came down in the Transport not so long ago, too. It overheated and stopped mid journey to I went into a service duct to find a way out, but before I could go back and tell Ada what I'd found, then Transport had cooled its engine an went on down.'

"So she should be here too?" Claire questioned, switching the walky-talky over from her left hand to her right to get a better grip of the device.

'Yeah' Replied Leon. 'but for the engine to overheat when I used it before you, that must mean that someone else has been on it recently before we came along?'

"Sherry and Kain?" Claire fearfully asked.

'I found Sherry in the sediment pool in the sewers.' Leon explained.

"She and I were separated when a drainage system activated! She must have ended up there. . ."

'Right, but Kain came along and sensed something had been implanted inside of her. Claire, if it's anything like the thing that got Ben Bertolucci back in the cells of the R.P.D then Sherry's in serious danger. We all sat there and watch Ben get torn apart from a monster that had been implanted inside him. Sherry could go the same way! Kain told her what was going on and she ran off, he followed her but when I ran to catch p with them after finding Ada, all I found was the corridor had been torn apart by a massive confrontation with some kind of monster!'

"Oh, Sherry! Are they okay?"

'They must have been if they took the Transport down into the labs. Look out for her and Kain, okay? They're in there too.'

Leon shut off the walky-talky and Claire was left wit a resounding white noise in her right ear. She shut off the walky-talky thoughtfully. . .She had to find a cure for Sherry, but finding Sherry at all would be a task. . .

Claire headed onwards into the facility feeling a strangled uncertainty grip a hold of her. They were so close to escape, but the facility at the heart of the evil that had befallen Raccoon city could contain horrors the like of which they hadn't encountered yet. Getting everyone to the train in one piece, finding a cure for Sherry. . . It was as if someone had choreographed their final escape to be the most difficult challenge yet. All she could do was take care of herself and pray that the others did as such.

G-virus sample in one hand, gun in the other, Annette Birkin race down the hallow corridors of her husbands facility with a new kind of panic and energy filling her weary body and soul. If Sherry was her, not only would she be in danger of the multitude of horrific things that still lurked in the shadows of the laboratory Annette hadn't dare to explore, but she would be in danger of discovering the terrible truth about her family, that her father was the man that had caused this terrible thing to happen to the city Sherry grew up in. Annette prayed that Sherry hand't already figured out that the monster she fought on the Transport lift was her father. If she had, then she might have figured out her fathers' role in all this; Sherry could be a surprisingly sharp girl at times.

Annette had recently just left the P4-laboritory, which was the very room in which her husband William made that fateful choice to inject the G-virus into himself as a final dying act of revenge. His blood was still all over the place where he lay against the desks, bleeding to death while those men snatched his lifes work right out from under him. In the P-4 lab, Annette had spent the last half hour synthesising a sample of the virus. It was the sample she planned to take with her when she blew this lab sky high. She'd set the clock just after she left to look for Sherry: Twenty minuets of silent countdown, but after ten minuets the system automatically launched a verbal warning to encourage the 'employees' (now all dead) to head to the emergency train a short distance from where she was. She had passed the locked entrance to the lift that would taker her to the emergency train on the way to the P-4 lab. It would take her less that a minuet to reach that entrance, and another three minuets to get from the lift to the train. It would be no problem. No problem at all. . . If Sherry descended in the Transport, then Annette knew exactly where she would be right now. The East wing was fairly pathetic in size: it housed a cold room, some sleeping bunks, and the capsule room, which was there they stored some early G-virus tests that they had performed. The West wing lead down to the section Annette was in now. There was a very daunting ladder one had to descend in order to get here: now only was it so long you couldn't see the bottom of the tunnel, but at some point during the virus leak, a gargantuan column of slimy, virus enhanced plant growth had ascended the far wall of the tunnel like a giant pillar. Once you got past that, you would pass the corridor that housed the passage to the emergency train, and beyond that was the surveillance room, then beyond that, corridor Annette was in right now.

Thinking quickly, Annette raced through the automatic door that wined mechanically as it allowed her through the empty surveillance room and to the corridor that housed the entrance to the train. There were some zombies at the far end, but they hadn't noticed her and simply stood as if waiting for some prey to emerge from the opposite side of the corridor. Annette tapped the open button for the thick steel doors emblazon with the biological hazard symbol to allow her access, but there was a buzz sound from the controls, and nothing happened. She tried again, her heartbeat increasing with her mounting anxiety and some of the zombies on the opposite end of the corridor finally started to notice her. She got the same reaction from the computer, and this time read the error message that came up on the screen.

'Please insert M.O. Disk'

What? You mean it's not in there? Annette checked the Mini-Disc tray, her hands shaking and feverish with panic and found that it was empty. Someone had hidden the M.O. Disk that she needed to open these doors! She had set the self-destruct for twenty minuets, but she could be here all day looking for that thing! Annette felt her throat close up with stress. Things were rapidly spiralling out of control, the zombies at the other end of the passage lurched mindlessly towards her and she was forced to double back and head back to the corridor that held the P-4 Laboratory. Her breaths were sharp, the only nose slicing through the air of the empty corridor. Annette considered searching the P-4 lab for the disc, but thought that would be too obvious so instead headed for the computer room that was off right of the corridor she had emerged from (the P-4 lab was off to the left). She'd been in there once before tonight. It was full of giant eggs covered in a strange sewn-like silk that clung to everything, picking up a mucky green tinge from the dried dirt and dust that stuck to it. One of the eggs had hatched and from the thick leathery casing sprang a giant moth. She took care of it with a flamethrower she had found. She had to discard the flamethrower: it had run out of fuel.

Annette used her lab key card to gain access to the room and once there, brushed roughly at the dirty, sticky goo that coated the desktops trying desperately hard to locate the all-important M.O. Disk. It wasn't here. Annette's heart sank: What if it wasn't anywhere? Annette bit her lip. She bit her lip so hard it drew a bit of blood, the streamer of red crimson running down her flawless chin and staining the collar of her white lab coat with spots of red. She rushed out of the automatic door and raced over to the entrance of the P-4 laboratory-

- To find someone standing outside it, preparing to enter.

Annette froze, regarding the person with her deep blue eyes. It was a young woman, no older nineteen or twenty, wearing pink cut-off denim and big boots, her hair in a ponytail. Annette's shock and bewilderment began to melt into a hot, burning, offended rage.

"Who're you?" She spat, training her weapon on the back of the intruding girl. She span around but froze at the very moment her dark, youthful eyes touched the sight of Annette's weapon trained between her sweating, shaking hands. Annette smirked a cruel smirk of satisfaction: the girl was afraid and so she should be if she was about to do what she looked like she was about to do. Those men that killed William came for the G-virus sample, but when William injected the sample into himself, he stopped those men from getting away by killing them all and injecting the stolen samples into himself. If Umbrella wanted the G-virus, then they would have sent a spy to recover it from the labs synthesis machine itself, which was located in the P-4 Laboratory, the very lab Annette had caught this sickly little rat sneaking into.

The girls' eyes looked into hers. "Are you Ada?" She asked cautiously.

"You think I'm Ada?" Annette chuckled at that preposterous assumption. Annette had seen a woman she had recently learnt to be Ada Wong - a spy for hire that had been paid to get close to John to learn all that he knew on the new virus synthesis - with a young cop back in the sewers. Annette had fired a few shots at her, but hit only the cop. Her shot wasn't fatal, though: She'd seen him on the monitors sneaking into the facility through a duct. "Don't be so foolish! I'm not your contact!"

"You contact?" Said the young girl, her eyes filling with confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Give it up" Spat Annette, growing frustrated. "I know you're sent by the company to steal my husbands G-virus. Stop pretending you don't know!"

"Your husband. . .!" The girl exclaimed out loud. "Then you must be Annette. . . You've got to listen to me, Sherry's here in the facility with Kain somewhere and I think she might be infected with one of William's embryos. You have to tell me how to cure her!"

"What?" Annette was stunned into shock for a few moments at the mention of Sherry's name, and her terrible fate at the hands of her father. Part of her screamed inside herself for sanity: she could be a spy still, she could be lying and using Sherry's name to get to you. "But you said Kain's with her. . ." Asked Annette. This was something a spy simply wouldn't make up. The company knew Kain's past. They knew he bitterly hated humans for all the atrocities they had committed against his race, so if this girl was cooking up a cover story, why would she suggest such an unlikely team? "Kain is fiercely anti-human! Why would he risk himself to protect my daughter?"

"I don't know. . ." Confessed Claire. "And I don't think he knows why, either. All I know is that the two of them came down here together and now I need to find them!"

Annette suddenly recalled what she had witnessed back in the surveillance room. The Abel monster was dead so it couldn't have been that, but she had seen a creature inside the facility that had all the psychical attributes that could only have pointed to one man: Kain. This had confirmed it.

"Kain's dead. Or as good as dead." The young girls glimmer of hope dulled and disappeared from her youthful yet dirty face. The crestfallen girl gave Annette a painful reminded of the hope she lost when the virus had taken her William from her. Part of her soul died - rotted away in her chest - when she saw the bodies of those soldiers that William had mutilated. Seeing that sight made her truly aware that her William would never come back.

Annette continued, trying to be gentle with the girl, feeling awkward inside at the fact that she knew the pain the girl was experiencing right now. "I saw him on a monitor in the surveillance room: he's become a monster now . . ." Annette thought quickly. "But I don't think he'd want you to get distressed by it. . . You have to survive no matter what."

The girl was silent for a few moments, and for those few moments, Annette believed she was going to cry until abruptly, she filled with a wilful strength once more and spoke up.

"Annette, you have to help me. I can find a cure for Sherry and you can make contact with Leon and Ada and tell them to get down here. I've got the M.O. Disk to open the path up, but I wont leave without them!"

"Are you insane?" Barked Annette, getting her nerve back and remembering that this girl was still a potential threat. Annette became aware of the gun in her hands once again and aimed it directly at the girls pretty little head. "Ada is s spy sent by the company to steal William G-virus and I wont give it up! This virus is the most significant piece of research my husband has left with me!"

"Ada may be an Umbrella spy but she'd still a human being!" The girl defiantly argued as if the deadly weapon wasn't trained on her head. "She deserves to get out of here with her life just like the rest of us!"

"No!" Screamed Annette fiercely tempted to pull the trigger. "How dare you even suggest that we escape with a woman who could snatch William's research out from under me?"-

- Annette abruptly dived forward and tore the M.O. Disk from the Claires' grasp. She couldn't do much to resist her for fear of being shot, and dared not give chase as Annette raced down the corridor towards the surveillance room with her gun aimed roughly in her direction, but swore she'd get to her before she took that train out of the facility. Annette was a heated woman emotionally. She wasn't thinking straight, and if Claire allowed her to get away, then she would be ditching her own daughter in this hellhole with no means of escape.-

-Something from the corridor where Annette had disappeared crashed down, like a ceiling panel being thrown forcefully to the ground. The ground shook from the impact of some unseen creature in the corridor beyond. Claire couldn't stand around here listening in. She rushed in pursuit of Annette-

- To see a massive black mass of flesh and claw towing over the woman. Its body was a mass of black, hard muscle with a puckered and pulsating hole rimmed with teeth at the centre of its immense chest. It had four powerful arms that were tipped with sets of bone claws, five claws on the top arms that were the largest, each the width of a human body, the bottom set that hung where one would expect human arms to be placed, with only four, indicating they were not the arms the magnificent man-beast was born with. It was the head that gave away what it was: Those glowing, intense red eyes on a head that seemed metal in appearance with a hole of a mouth filled with jagged bone-teeth. It was William Birkin. When he had originally been infected, his wounded body was covered in a thick red growth that reached across his flesh like vines, like muscle tissue of a more powerful animal growing over the weak and feeble human body perfecting itself further. Now it seemed the process was in its final stages, after the human flesh had been overwritten with a more powerful muscle structure, a thick black callous grew over the top and the head was replaced with a perfected one; when the creature had it's back to you one could see the human brain that formerly belonged to William peaking out of the back. When William was originally infected, he also only had the one giant, oozing, slimy eye on his right shoulder. Now he had several dotted all over his body, one of his left leg, one on his back, but the one on his right shoulder still remained the dominant one. Its forehead was pointier now, causing it to resemble the head of a shark somewhat and the rows of sharp and organised teeth (unlike the haphazard mess of teeth that stage 2 – fought by Sherry- possessed) added to the predatory look. It had perfected and evolved into a more powerful and precise, less clumber some killing machine.

Annette was consumed by a stunned awe. For a few moments she didn't speak as she regarded the enormous monster that had once been the man she loved. In return, it regarded her but not in curiosity but in a cold and emotionless, icy stare through fiery red eyes. Claire couldn't shoot it. Annette was in the way of her line of fire. Claire held her breath and prayed that it remembered his wife. . . how much in love they were with each other and how he never would have raised his fists against her as a mortal man.

"William . . ." Annette breathed in a strange mix of sorrow, horror and relief. "You're alive!"

William's stare was empty, just as it was empty when its immense claws tore across his wife and sent her crashing into the wall with a painful crunch of bone and a tortured cry from the woman. Both she and the virus she had held in her hand were smashed, both their fluids leaking onto the floor like free flowing water. Annette's blood ran from the place on the wall she had hit and joined the rapidly spreading pool in which she lay.

The monster looked at Claire, It's red eyes fixing to hers and Claire felt herself freeze. It could have gone after her next. It could have torn into her just like it had its wife. But it didn't. It jumped back into the whole in the ceiling from whence it came.

Annette's broken body was still moving in the puddle of her own blood, and Claire raced over.

Annette's face did now show the physical pan she was in, but the pain she felt inside at being struck down by her own husband.

Claires' voice took on a begging tone. "Annette, you have to tell me how to cure Sherry, _PLEASE!_"

Annette coughed through the blood and the pain. She didn't have long, but at least Sherry could be saved. . .

"Go to the P-4 lab. . ." She said quietly. "There, you'll find a vaccine cartridge with the base vaccine inside: I prepared it earlier. Put it into the vaccine synthesis machine and take the blue test tube that comes out. You have to do it. . . Save my Sherry. . ." Annette closed her eyes, unable to continue through the pain but she had told the girl everything she would need to know."

The girl nodded and ran back to the P-4 lab, leaving the dying Annette Birkin alone. She hurt all over, both inside and out but she'd be damned if she died here in some sterilised laboratory corridor like this. Williams' attack had left almost every inch of her body feeling cut and bruised but she would not die like this. She refused to fulfil those ghastly rumours she had heard from the other researchers. When William descended into madness all those years ago and started divulging the future he had seen because of an accidental curse inflicted on him by the Time Streamer, the other researchers spoke to each other about the things he had been crying out in his delirium. He hated himself because he would kill his wife and wouldn't be able to stop it, and he hated Kain because he awoke from his two hundred year slumber in Nosgoth, he would do the same thing. The only difference would be that Kain had a choice. He could have spared her life. He could have forgiven her. But he didn't. He wouldn't. He _won't_. And that's what William hated about Kain so much. William admired Kain in every way except that. William was driven crazy by the knowledge that he would kill the only woman in the world that could love him, the only woman in the world that he could love back, and he couldn't stop it. He kept saying it was his destiny. He kept saying it was _Kains'_ destiny to throw it all away like it was the kind of thing that you could throw away and it would keep coming back. Kain would kill this woman because he believed she had betrayed him. Annette now understood that the reason the William monster had killed her (her wounds were mortal) was because of that sample of G-virus she carried; it believed she was taking it away, taking it and betraying him and his G-virus, but it was all just a big misunderstanding. Annette wasn't taking the virus to steal it, and maybe the woman Kain would kill, would be doing the same thing as her. . .

Annette forced herself to get up, relying on the wall rather than her own beaten legs for support. When Claire would travel back through the passage with the G-vaccine, all that would be left in the corridor would be a puddle of blood, the M.O Disk, and a trail of red handprints across the walls of a woman filled with a desperation to defy the fate this worlds Time Stream had written for her.


	13. Part13: Sherrys' Will

Sherry's stomach pains were becomes close to unbearable. When she first entered the facility via the Transport, she almost passed out but the monster of her fathers' violent hiss snapped her out of it, the adrenalin leaking into her system making the intense soreness changed to a dull throb. She'd heard about that in science class. Animals in danger have the fight of flight response, which is where they make a split second option to engage the enemy or run. The adrenalin in the system numbs pain sensations, as it wouldn't do to feel the pain of a broken leg when fleeing from the predator could save your life.

After getting off the Transport, a brief search of the cupboards of the security room yielded a half-ful pack of paracetamol that Sherry took with some bottled water on a desk to sooth the burning. If anything, as the chemically tasting suds slipped down into her stomach, the pain and the burning increased in its intensity.

Sherry didn't know exactly where she was. . . She did know she was deep within the earth, possibly even miles and miles beneath the city, but she still didn't know exactly what this place was for. She tried at a guess: the Umbrella logos on the walls were an obvious clue that the pharmaceutical company owned this plant, but why would they need to hide it like this?

'Isn't it obvious by now?' A part of her mind whispered darkly to her. 'This is where all the zombies and monsters are coming from. Your mother and father told you they worked in a chemical plant at the city limits; this must be it, and seeing that _thing_ that used to be your daddy should be the final piece of the puzzle: Your parents did this to the city, they did this to you and Claire and dragged Kain from wherever the hell he came from to endure this disgusting hell. It's all their fault, - and you, - as their child, shares the same dark heart.'

Sherry swallowed heavily. That didn't sound like her mind at all, but she had thought it nonetheless. This night, those zombies, Kain, this thing that was growing inside her – all of it had done something to her soul. She could feel it just below the surface in the deep pits of her heart, turning, twisting, _searching_ for something to set it free. Something was wrong with her. She had felt her heart changing all night but only now did it occur to her that it was doing more than making her weak soul stronger against the horror, but changing her into something. . . . darker. What was most terrifying was that she had seen it in someone else. She had seen it in Kain. The way Kain behaved. . . she understood it now. Back when she first met him he made her sick. Now, he was all she could think about.

She hurt all over. Sherry was really beginning to wonder if she was ever meant to escape this night. Her father was defiantly dead, his tortured, disembodied soul filled with a remorse she'd never seen in him before and if he was gone, then her mommy had probably died too. She didn't like the idea of that. The monster that her father's physical body had become at least didn't look like him now, so she could pretend it wasn't him, that his spirit was most likely elsewhere and so it didn't count. Her mother on the other hand… . What if her zombie was around these laboratory halls? If she ran into it, she'd have to take it out. . . .. Sherry had changed, but not that much. . . right?

She swallowed hard as she searched the small security office for her trademark ventilation shaft escape route. At first glance she thought she couldn't do it, but pictured it in her head, picturing the sagging, rotting flesh hanging loosely from the bone and soulless, cataract eyes framed by that blonde hair her mother wore about should length, like a sickly ghoul that had taken her mothers shape. She pictured it waiting for her, pictured killing it, picture the slowly spreading pool of eerily discoloured blood hued a blackish colour and felt _nothing._

Nothing at all.

She hoped it wouldn't be like that in real life. Hesitating to shoot the zombie of her mother may put her life at risk, but it was the one and only way she could prove her humanity without lying to herself. If she lost her weakness, lost her uncontrollable urge to vomit at the horrors of this night, then how much different from the monsters would she be? Sure she could think and speak, but how many more zombies would she have to kill to change all the way? Slowly, Sherry became aware of what she was changing into. At the beginning of this nightmare, she ran from the zombies, in the middle, she killed them out of necessity. She fear that by the end of this all, the blood, the violence, the increasing sensation of satisfaction she got from the gore spray she witness from blasting a hole in a monster, would become an addiction. She became afraid that after this night, she wouldn't be able to function as a human being without killing. When she stopped killing, it all became real. The zombies changed from targets to people, people with rotted, discoloured flesh hanging from their bones wailing out in hungry pain, gushing dirty inky, lumpy fluids. What happened if when she escaped Raccoon City, she'd have to go on killing to stop the horror from consuming her?

On the wall of the security office was a map of the facility. It was difficult for the girl to make sense of the diagram as, to her, it was just a big jumble of rigid lines, blocks and rectangles all overlapping. Reading the labels, it looked as it the whole lab complex with riddled with hidden shafts, service tunnels and various others of the like. Sherry sighed to herself. It was obvious even to her that if you were developing monsters, you would give them as little routes of escape as possible. Especially as it's placed beneath a large part of the city like this. She shook her head. This place was an accident waiting to happen.

Looking over the map, she saw that there were no vents in this immediate area for 'health and safety reasons'. The Transport had descended miles into the earth to the sky wasn't visible from the bottom of the shaft. It was, however, open to the air, and in the event of an emergency, the elevator and mechanical door that lead into the labs automatically locked, as it was the most obvious route the monster would take in the event of a breakout. They would be drawn to the unusual sensation of fresh air seeping into the harsh, artificial odour of antiseptic and would have used the vents to get to this area, then up the shaft and to freedom. The fact that the transport worked, however, was a major clue that main power had been restored to the lab. She hoped that the emergency train that lead out of the labs had defrosted and was operational, because if it were, there'd still be hope. . ..

.. . . . Hope. . . . The emotion brewing inside her didn't feel like hope. . . she felt . . . . strangely nauseous in the pit of her stomach . . .

She forced that from her mind. She knew if she dwelt on these odd emotions she was having, she'd never keep it together enough to. . . escape.

Again, she felt that odd emotion, so she changed her priorities from escape, to finding her friends again. Claire, that young cop, possibly her mother. . . They'd all be heading for that train on what the map had shown to be the lowest level of the subterranean laboratory. According to the map, she could take the main elevator all the way down to the train, which was right next to the security office. She doubted it would be that simple so just to be on the safe side, she pulled out a sheet of paper that was in a type writer by the door and scribbled down a rough map. She tried to be as scant with her map as possible, of course, leaving out the levels she knew she wouldn't need to go on. Other than the elevator next to the security room, an alternate route to the lowest level - and the emergency train - there was a huge main shaft that lead to the east and west wings. She had to go through the west wing to another large shaft, that had a long ladder leading all the way down to the lower levels. After descending that ladder, she need only go through a corridor to get to the main doors for the emergency train. After that she didn't really need a map. The path was a direct route, a strange diagonally moving elevator would take her straight to the platform. . . . assuming someone hadn't already taken the train out.

Reloading her handgun, but keeping her electricity shooting spark shot holstered across her back for a quick draw in case of emergency, Sherry left the relative safety of the security office and tried the elevator, just in case. It seemed to be fully powered and even opened up, but to her great dismay, there was a console on the wall directly opposite of the doors, a console that required a master key of some kind to unlock the emergency route to the train. She went back to check the office, but her search came up with nothing. She was going to have to take the long route. She sighed and looked back at the map on the wall of the office, comparing it to the scrawled doodle she had drawn to check for last minuet errors, when her eye was caught by something familiar on the diagram. Looking at it again, she swallowed hard. It was her fathers name, written right next to a room marked prominently as the 'P-4 Laboratory'. From the looks of the bold highlighting of the outline of the room, it looked as if it was the main laboratory of the whole lab. . . and where it all must have begun. She ignored it, or at least tried to. It was only a short walk from the entrance route to the emergency train.. . . she could take a look. . . or not. . .

Now wasn't the time to get all sentimental and doomsey. She was so close, so close to the thing she had desired throughout this nightmare, for what felt life an entire lifetime –escape – and in some sick way, part of her was seeking every opportunity to delay her getaway. It had to end, either with escape or death, and Sherry was too afraid to die. She took to the route planned out on her map, forcing all thought and feeling from her once delicate mind and relying on animal instinct alone to see her through. Sherry passed through the door to the main shaft, a massive chamber, like the inside of a giant, bottomless pipe lined with machinery and cables and a large, pipe-like structure at it's centre where the three walkways (east, west, and the one which she entered the area from) met up. However, when she entered the cavity, she heard a somewhat distant mechanical whine – the sound of the doors opening and closing – from what sounded like the door to the west area. She glanced, wide eyed over to it just in time to see the door sliding to a close. At first she was about to run, to catch up with the person who had opened it, but then froze. There was no guarantee it was a human that had operated that door. The doors were automatic to an extent from what she saw. There was some kind of electronic card reading device that automatically opened the doors for lab personnel that wore their I.D card. Usually, it wouldn't open for anyone else, but the lab had suffered a massive attack at the hands of it's own research specimens, and the crisis situation caused an override to take over. A push of the big red button labelled 'emergency' next to the door opened the doors without security authorisation. If what went through that door was a zombie of a lab worker or worse, her father, then those doors would open for them without the use of any intelligence. She might be running into a trap.

Sherry proceeded slowly, hesitantly, reaching the entrance to the west wing without allowing her footfalls to make a sound on the metal bridge linking the entrance to the west area to the main shaft; a technique she had mastered during her stay in the nightmarish parody of Raccoon city. She was hesitant in pressing the door release, but drew her sparkshot to give her some sense of security. She held it limply in one arm and pressed the door release with the other, but the second she hit that button, the heavy weapon was aimed at the door with both hands. She was afraid – of course she was afraid – but what terrified her even more was the empty passageway that greeted her. If it was a monster, better to blow it away now than to go on through the sinister complex wondering feverishly if it'll be around the next corner, _waiting_ for her. . .

Continuing onward only filled her with more primal dread. Apparently, there had been two plant monsters waiting for her –things that looked half man-shaped but with green tentacles and the head of a budded flower that opened to gush a paralysing acid in preparation for consuming its prey. At least, that's what she could tell from what was left of them. They both lay, tentacles twitching in a puddle of strange, greenish-black blood right before the door that lead to that long ladder she needed to descend. It looked like something had punched a hole right through their chests where the heart was located on a human. Sherry neared the bodies, but the tentacles - apparently acting with a separate will from the dead creature - reacted to her prescience and whipped at her bare legs. They missed, but only by a hairs length. Had they touched her, they would have flayed the skin and muscle from the bone. This didn't bother Sherry nearly as much as it should have. . . She didn't let herself think about that. She was dehumanising herself by fighting, by surviving. No one said surviving this hell wouldn't come without its cost. She knew that. Dwelling on it wouldn't help anyone.

Wherever the monster was that did that to the plants, it wasn't around anymore. Even when Sherry accessed the shaft with the ladder, it didn't seem to be around. The ladder went down for hundreds of feet but there was no sight of it.. . well. . . it wasn't like the shaft was empty, though. On the opposite side of the shaft was a giant column ascending and descending further than Sherry's eye could see, reaching off into the foggy shadows at either end. The column was plant, but with mindlessly flailing tentacles and giant, orange puss covered eyes peering out from all angles. It looks similar to the strange growth covering her fathers' body, only plant like in nature. It seemed fairly immobile though, and didn't bother her. Climbing onto the ladder, she smiled. Before, she had a fear of heights, but now she felt nothing. Nothing at all. . . not even the adrenaline burn that she had gotten used to throughout this nightmare. It had gone. But there was something wrong. The adrenalin burn wasn't there, but a different kind of burn was. She'd forgotten all about the thing in her stomach, but she wasn't forgetting it now. She stopped feeling that adrenalin burn like the fire had been sucked out of that parasite within her had fed on it. She could feel it moving inside her and it caused her tremendous agony. Her grip loosening on the metal rungs of the ladder, she hauled herself back onto the platform desperately through the pain.

As suddenly as the pain began, it ceased. For a few moments, Sherry lay sprawled on the floor next to of the ladders with her tiny pale hand clutching at the fabric covering her stomach. She didn't want to try those ladders again before certifying that it wasn't about to start up again. Her adrenaline rush from the monster that had killed the plants and them climbing down ladders that seemingly descended into nothingness had caused the creature within her to excite for some reason. Maybe adrenaline equalled fear and thusly danger towards the parasite within her, causing it to become anxious itself. If she were in its place she wouldn't want to hang around a host that was sending chemical messages indicating it was going to get wasted. Sherry breathed deeply. Fear caused the thing inside her to excite, and she didn't like the feelings of splitting pain that raced through her as it struggled within her. Now that it had stopped moving, all that was left was a hot glowing feeling in the pit of her stomach, like she was bleeding inside. She tried her hardest not to let this odd feeling make her afraid again.

It was only then that the question struck her: Why was she doing this? Why fight? Why go on living? Have you any idea of the death and suffering that had been endured by thousands of innocent people on this night? What gave her the right to survive? For the first time this night, Sherry wasn't sure what to do. Before everything had been so clear - fight, run, hide, survive – those commands were as plain as the nose on her face and always she had obeyed them, but now, she wasn't so sure anymore. What good reason did she have to live through all this? She didn't have any friends or family left, if she lived, it was only a matter of time before the government got their hands on her and did god knows what to her, being the daughter of two great scientists like this. If she lived, what would happen to her could be far, far worse than what would happen to her if she died here in Raccoon City. The shaft was a long way down. . . If she hit the bottom, death would be instantaneous. . . The fear would disappear after she jumped. . .

Something was holding her back. Sure she was afraid to die but that fear lurked inside her at every waking moment on this night. At first, she hid because of this constant fear, but now she travelled around with it still within her soul. She had learnt to cope with it. Death was no longer the end to her; she had seen her father; there was something beyond. There was no guarantee the souls of the dead would do anything to her if she passed on, so why was she still so _damn_ _willing_ to live?

A face appeared in her mind, a face that made her smile warmly. It was Kain. He was the reason she was still going on. In some crazy part of herself, she didn't believe the parasite that had dominated his body would be enough to destroy him for good. Also, she didn't want to disappoint him. She wanted to live for him and it was a peculiar sensation to her. He had placed a great deal of faith in her abilities, far more than she believed she would ever understand. To give up now would be the greatest insult to his memory she could muster.

Sherry started down the seemingly bottomless ladders, filled with a new sense of purpose.


	14. Part 14: The End and a New Beginning

This is the final chapter, and if you've read it all the way to here, you may want to know that the prequel / sequel to this story is LOKRE2: Nosgoth. Go on my account and look for it there. I'd link to it, but it makes the thing go crazy…

Leon raced along side the train platform, the bulky vehicle clearly designed to carry cargo from it's destination, lord only knows what had been shipped in and out through the endless dark tunnel Leon Kennedy now sough to release from the substantially thick iron gates. The train was activated but if it were to go now, the gates would immediately stop it. There was no way it could build up enough speed to ram them at the short distance the trains front was from them and Leon wasn't about to risk their only chance of escape on such a reckless action.

'Their only escape' who was he kidding? That crazy, psychotic blonde scientist shot Ada, shot her and he watched her plummet down the main shaft beyond the transport and there was nothing he could do to save her. _Nothing_. What made him feel worse was that for a time, he had hold of her in his hand – on the side of his bullet-wounded arm – and he hadn't the strength to rescue her. He didn't have a clue what had happened to Sherry and Kain, but Claire had contacted him a few moments ago via a walkie-talkie he gave to her all the way back when he still stalked the corridors of the R.P.D when he still naively believed they would find survivors. Of course he had found a few, but what unnerved him the most about it all was that he was the only cop in Raccoon City to have survived this far. Escape was a hairs length away and it had come at a great cost. His tortured heart ached; the dried bullet wound on his shoulder still throbbed dully beneath the makeshift bandage Ada and wrapped his chest in. . . but still the young rookie cop had fire enough in him to fight on. Leon had undoubtedly suffered the most out of all the survivors, the batters war-torn appearance he now wore a far cry from the clean, fresh-faced vibes he gave out upon his first encounter with Kain.

Leon had set the two plugs into the power system a few moments ago and the seemingly sleeping platform lit up in a blinding flash of electric light. The train platform was located in a very odd location. Behind the train itself there were circular iron smelting pools filled with an orangey, smooth liquid much like lava, from which hot bubbles would rise and burst from the molten metal. These pools were not any danger to Leon however, contained behind a steel fence.

Next to the power controls in which Leon had inserted the plugs was a giant mechanical column that ascended far beyond his vision, and all around the walls of the train area were steel pipes and rungs, like an industrial jungle of creepers and various other forms of indigenous growth, the cold grey steel all mysteriously tinted a deep orange by the powerful glow of the iron smelting pools.

The gate controls wouldn't activate without power being restored to the area, and without the gate open, they weren't going anywhere. That was all fixed now, and Leon flew up the bridge that arched over the bulky train itself and burst through a seemingly needless gate that served only to separate the bridge area from the entrance to the train. Leon ran so quickly, and so determinedly that he narrowly avoided a zombie snatching at him from the shadows of the emergency tunnel that lead back to the lab complex. Apparently, the activation of the power and lighting had caused a few hungry souls to be drawn to its glow like a moth to a flame.

The creature that pawed at Leon's dirty uniform was naked but in such an advanced state of decomposition that there was no way to tell what sex it had been in life. Its blueish skin was shrived and prune-ish and its grip was weak and powerless; dry to the touch. It had been like this for a very long time, longer than the other, liquefying zombies on the darkened city streets above that still wore their hair and clothes like the humans being that had previously occupied that body. Horrified by how close he had come, he batted the wailing animal, it's vocal chords so thoroughly shredded by this highly advanced stage of decay that it didn't even sound like it had once been a person at all. If that had been like all the other zombies he had encountered on the surface, it would not have been so easy to throw it off of him. The surface zombies still had a fair amount of muscle tissue left and the inability to feel pain or the inhibition that comes _with_ the fear of pain gave them an ability to summon physical strength the likes of which they never knew as a human.

Upon it striking the ground, there was a terrible crack and as the creature rose unhurriedly and seemingly deliberately from the steel floor, it left a limb behind- an arm – fingers still twitching of their own will. Leon had seen his share of horror movies, but somewhere deep inside of him, he refused to accept what he was seeing. He refused to believe that if he were to die - right here, right now - he would become like that thing. Something inside him was teetering on the edge of an emotional cliff as he raised his handgun in his single good arm to place a bullet in its pulpy brain. Now was not the time to flip-out, but Leon felt as if he had survived too much to transform into that mindless animal – no, animal wasn't the word. As the thing in from of him rose up, eyeless sockets filled with shadow; a perfect companion to its perpetually gaping hole of a mouth, now so damaged it could not be closed; Leon refused to believed he would become such a mindless automaton in death. Even in the most mindless of animals there was some glimmer of life in the way they moved. The creatures' movements were somehow barren and lifeless. Even the zombies up on the surfaced still moved like human beings when they caught sight of potential prey. . .

"I'm not like you. . ." Leon stated to the beast as it continued its lurch towards him, blind to the powerful weapon trained at what Leon thought was personally offensive to him to call its head. He needed to hear himself say it, to hear that the slaughter hadn't robbed him of his humanity in a way in which would make him far worse than any of the monsters he had put to death with his gun on this night.

After slapping at the gate controls thus opening the trains path for its' escape, Leon almost dived into the train when the door veered open with a harsh mechanical whine. Leon readied the magnum. Before setting the train on its journey, he would wait a while just incase someone survived. The thought of leaving Claire or Sherry of Kain behind out of haste to flee from the laboratory tore at his weary heart matching in its intensity the hot, dull throb of the bullet wound he took for Ada.

Ada... . . Leon shuddered as again the moment she slipped from his grasped played out in his scarred mind. She had died because of him. He promised he would protect her and he failed. "I'm not going to let anyone else die." Leon hissed quietly through gritted teeth, his voice rough with raw emotion. Leons' exploration of the train was uneventful. There was only one small seating area right before the cockpit, but the space in the room in the next carriage was wide and vacant; obviously a storage space of some kind, but it was mostly empty save for a small amount of crates at the very end of the train.

The coast was clear; the train left untouched by the monsters that stalked the sterile corridors of the laboratory in search of their next prey. Leon rushed back through to the front of the train, to the cockpit to prepare the train to depart as soon as it was required to. -

- The gates at the front of the train were closed.

Leon shook his head in hazy confusion. Had he opened them before he came in? He was so messed up after that last zombie attack that his memory was clouded in an adrenalin fuelled fuzz.

No time to think. Leon rushed back out onto the platform and to the gate controls to clear their escape. This time he made sure he was pressing the right buttons and bothering to read the other labels on the consol before hitting the big green 'open' button. Was their a timed function on it? That might explain why he was so certain he opened them before he-

- Leon froze. An extreme sense of absolute terror fell over him like a black heavy cloud of malice. What made this emotion peculiar was that it was completely alien to him, as if some malevolent force had descended upon him against his conscious control. At that instant, Leon was sure he was sensing that something wicked and vastly powerful was someplace extremely close by.-

- And this was confirmed by a hot breath on the back of his neck that stung of the same malevolence he sensed before. Before he even turned around, he knew what it was he perceived in such a supernatural sense.

Leon span around as the mighty dark beast let out an inhuman bellow, followed by ragged wail that confirmed Leons' suspicions. The magnificent monster that had him cornered by the gate controls - reset the train gate intentionally to lure Leon out _HAD_ at one time been the vampire Kain.

It was twice Kains' size now. Before Kain was an impressive man whos' very prescience intimidated you with a sinister untamed menace. Now, the thing that screeched into the dead air before Leon was easily over eight foot of _demon_, patches of the rock hard callous that coated the creature revealed beneath it hints of clothing and white, but dirtied flesh, like something had grown over Kains' entire body and was operating him like a puppet. It didn't look like the Umbrella monsters. . . The blackish – possibly of the darkest of reds – callous that covered the demon had strange, vein-like cracks running through it. From its back protruded long, sword-like spines that shone as the caught the orange neon glow of the iron-smelting pit. The shape of its' head and face had spread out, warping his cranium into an impressive crown-skull and dark, deepest eye sockets almost hid completely the savage yellow catlike eyes that had once belonged to the original Kain. Had a Nosgoth inhabitant seen the face of the beast, they would have instantly recognised its' resemblance to the legendary sword; 'Soul Reaver'.

Leon couldn't think through his sheer terror. His mind wobbled jittery between 'fight' and 'run', his powerful blue eyes bathed in white, piercing terror making them appear amusingly childlike to the monster that had hunted the young officer to the solitude of the train platform. Leon didn't have the chance to react when the demon creature snatched at his throat and raised him off his feet. The Kain monsters' spiteful, icy, yellow eyes trailed from Leons' terrified - but defiant - eyes to the dried bullet wound on his right shoulder; the bullet he'd taken for Ada. Leon struggled, knowing what it had planned, but it was pointless. Kain was so much more powerful than him even as a vampire. Leon could never break free of this monsters grasp with his body alone.

In a last attempt at freedom, Leon released the claws around this throat that he had instinctively gripped when it clutched his, and instead used what little of his strength he had left to jam a round into his magnum and unload it right into the monsters chest. At point blank range, Leon was tanking an extreme risk of injuring himself seriously but he knew that if the demon beast didn't release him now, he would become the unwilling plaything to its immeasurably enhanced lust for blood and carnage. The explosions of the magnum blast threatened to deafen him, as did the thunderous howls – mixed in with half Kain-like moans – of the beast but it was over in a few short seconds. The creature shifted its' grasp on Leon from raising him up by his neck to a mere firm clutch of his good arm with long, spindly, cutting claws. It stared slowly down at where Leon had unloaded a magnum clip into him, and Leons' eyes followed it down. The magnum bullets were lodged in the armour-like skin of the beast, but other than that, they had barely scratched it.

"Not possible!" Leon let out by accident. He could _feel_ the tattered remnants of his mind unravelling at an alarming rate, his soul slipping from his control, threatening to throw him into insanity. It just was not possible! The matrimony of G-virus and Vampire had created something that _could not_ be stopped by weapons crafted by human hands. But something had to be wrong with it. The monster was merged _over_ Kain, using his power against his sentient control like a parasite. There HAD to be a weakness at such an early stage of development. Leon couldn't think. It had to have a weakness, but the threat that the weakness would be discovered _after_ it had torn him to shreds forced rational thought from his mind and thus rendered him incapable of figuring out how to stop the unstoppable demon.

It reeked of evil. Leon could feel the darkness emanating from it in inky, intoxicating waves. Abruptly, Leon was consumed with a sharp pain in his shoulder and he realised that it was piercing his gunshot wound with its spindly, sharp black claws, cutting away the sensitively, newly healed tissue and letting his hot human blood run. Leon gritted his bloodied teeth, resisted the best he could the urge to scream, as that would be submitting to its perverse will. Leon opened his creased eyes briefly as it re-adjusting its claws to see its inhuman toothy smirk at causing him pain. –

- "Stop it!"-

-A high-pitched female voice cried out from the shadows of the corridor the lead back into the winding laboratory. Sherry Birkin emerged, still clad in the red shawl Kain had left behind, loading the handgun that –unbeknownst to her – once belonged to her father. The look of malevolence in her deep blue eyes caused bizarre shivers of fear to run up Leons' spine: The unforgiving look in her beautiful eyes changed her from that sweet little twelve year old girl into diminutive version of Kain.

Surprisingly, the demon obeyed. It turned its' attention from its prey to the small blonde girl and a glimmer of recognition sparked in its eyes.

When Kain had first been dominated by the parasite that had consumed his powerful body, he inadvertently lost while protecting Sherry. Now that it was in the final stages of its mutation, the only memories left over from Kain that were shared between Kain and the parasite that now consumed him, was that he lost while protecting Sherry. Sherry was the only memory Kain still had hold of.

William Birkin watched over the scene from a remote vantage point, now a spirit almost totally deranged from the anguish and sin of Raccoon city that had permeated his – at the artisan of this night - ethereal energies. He laughed to himself as the demon creature, overshadowing his tiny little daughter approaching her with a tenderness of movement that even Kain in his Vampiric unlife lacked. Williams' earlier theory was right. The thing that bound Kain to his former humanity was his prejudice towards humans. Now that he was almost totally assimilated by the G-virus parasite, he lacked humanity but possessed only a slight thread of his former mind. Without his humanity and vampirism, he no longer had racial prejudices towards humans that held him back from truly expressing his desire to protect Sherry. Infact, the desire to protect would never have developed at all if these unique sets of circumstances hadn't come about.

The monster examined her tiny unimposing form with yellow eyes consumed with conflicting emotions. It wanted to kill her bathe in her blood and gore, but something pulled it back from the brink of mindless brutality. The very last shred of sentient mind struggled to break free, clutching piteously to his last memory, his memory of her.

The creature was facing away from Leon, and in the midst of the sword-like spines that protruded from its slender back was a giant eye wreathed in gore-soaked tentacles that gripped to the spines and stole into the body of its host. That was a weak spot if ever he saw one. Leon drummed up every drop of courage in his worn out, dirtied body and with a last bellow, blue eyes burning with a white hot fire, Leon jumped onto the back of the beast and clawed at the bulbous, throbbing, oozing eye with his bare fingertips. It burst in a spray of cold, wet slime and gave out a magnificent squeal a sheer pain. The monster to roared and wailed in pure anguish that its life-force was draining away all because of one mere rupture on its back. Leon was flung off in its pain-induced thrashings, but even with the prey-turned-predator removed from its back, it continued to squeal and writhe and struggle.

Sherrys' concerned bleat rose into the orgy of noise, she ran for it, feeling a maternal instinct override her common sense, but found she was caught on something,-

- Claire. It was Claire. She had hold of her and was stopping her from aiding her former protector.

"He needs me!" Cried out Sherry, fighting against Claires could grip and gazing up at her with tear-rimmed eyes, longing for release.

"Kains' dead!" Cried out Claire getting to the very heart of the issue. "That monster is dying and if we doing get out of here, it'll tear us apart in the process!" Despite Claires words, Sherry continued to fight single-mindedly against her grip right up until – along with Leons' assistance- they dragged her kicking and screaming into the train.

Claire snagged Sherry violently by her arm and threw her against the bench against the far wall of the train.

"I know your upset but you have to understand that you can't help that thing out there!" Claire said to her, crouching down by her beside. Sherry knew Claire wasn't yelling out of anger. She was just trying to get her message through to her mind, clouded by both rage and sorrow. –

- And suddenly, without warning, the intense burning of the thing that had been implanted within her stomach flared up again, this time far more intensely it did burn than ever it had before. Sherry tried to fight showing her pain on the surface, but couldn't resist grimacing in vast pain. She tried to pretend it was the emotion involved that was causing her to flinch. For some reason, she didn't want Claire to know that thing inside her stomach was there.

Leon disappeared into the control room once more, then stormed furiously out of there a moment later after remember he never had a chance to reopen those gates. -

- But Sherry did notice the consol in the control room was beeping erratically. With a complete indifference towards Claire Redfield, Sherry hopped down from her bench and marched over to the consol in the control room adjacent to her. Claire followed her out of curiosity, the purity of her external features feeling somewhat alien to Sherry after the horrors she faced back in the sinister night of Raccoon City. Apparently, according to the blinking consoles, the self-destruct system to the laboratory had been activated and was counting down silently for twenty minuets of which fourteen had already been spent. The didn't have much time at all-

- But there was something else that was causing the consoles to go ballistic. There was a human prescience detected still within the laboratory facility and to her horror, it was Sherrys' mother! Face down on the steel walkway linking the west area to the rest of the lab lay her mother – Annette Birkin – struggling in vain to haul herself up from the floor. Her blonde hair and scientist attires of a white lab coat unmistakably identifying her as Sherrys' last remaining parent. Why hadn't Leon mentioned seeing her? He was going to leave her to die? _Her mother_?

She didn't need to consider her options for even a moment. With an unexpected burst of speed, Sherry sprinted past Claire – who was in the process of entering the control room in pursuit of her – and raced for the exit of the train. Leon was still struggling with the gate controls to notice her zip down the corridor to the emergency elevator back to the lab. She passed the fallen corpse of the monster that had once been her protector. The diamond hard tissues of its body were liquefying but the main bulk of the creature was still hidden beneath a frothy ooze that thankfully prevented the already emotionally fragile from seeing his dead, unresponsive carcass. He was once such a dominant animal. . . . To see him drained of his brutal soul would tear her apart.

She was sick of death. Her life as a Birkin now seemed like a distant, pleasant dream. She was very thankful of the steep learning curve Kain plunged her into when he gave her a gun and told her to defend herself. It had made her strong. Strong enough to save her mother, she hoped.

Leon could have sworn something rushed past him but didn't feel he could trust his flayed nerves. He ran back into the train but was met with a heavy thud as Claire departed the train right into him.

"What's going on? Is Sherry okay?" He demanded in his commanding, authorities voice.

"Sherry ran out to save her mother!" She wailed in alarm.

"Her mother?" Leon had a profound sinking feeling that threatened to choke him. The woman that shot Ada was on a screen in the control room but he ignored her. . . THAT was Sherrys' mother? He'd done it again. Another person was doomed to death because he couldn't be a good cop. First Ada, then Kain, then Sherrys' mother – and if they didn't hurry – next Sherry herself? Leon broke from Claire but skidded to a halt then the clunk – followed by a mechanical whine – of the elevator to the labs could be heard. By the time that elevator came back, it could already be too late to save her.

"What do we do now?" Claire demanded.

"We go back in and warm the train and for immediate departure." Commanded Leon. "If Sherry does come back, then we'll be able to take her." Leon paused momentarily, recalling how previously in the night, he and Kain discovered an unconscious Sherry, newly infected by the repugnant G-virus transmutation that had once been her father. "Maybe we should just leave without her. . ." Leon muttered as they re-boarded the train. He didn't want to have to say it, but if she did have a G-virus embryo in her then she was as good as dead.

"What?"

"I don't want to have to say it, but Sherry's infected with a G-virus embryo and I don't want to risk brining one of those monsters out into the outside world!" His tone softened. "I'm really sorry, but it's the only thing we can do."

"There _must_ be a cure!" Claires' maternal instincts kicking in, she began to push past Leon with the intention of moving right back out onto the platform but was stopped dead in her tracks by Leons' powerful grip on her arm.

"Even if there was a cure, the detonation function of the lab is going to go off in just under six minuets and there's no humanly possible way to throw one together in that time!"

I don't care: - I have to help her!"-

- The door to the train compartment whirled nosily open and in its frame stood a figure apparently weakened by their ordeal, leaning on the side of the door. They pushed themselves up into a authoritative rise; Leon and Claire couldn't believe their senses:

It was the vampire Kain.

The first thing he was aware of when he came to was how cold he was, and then he was aware of just how familiar this peculiar sensation felt to him. Shards of memory that had confounded him pulled back together into a working mind and he rose from the oiling, toxic soup that had once been part of his body. Kain fumbled at his back, the parasite that came within minuets of taking complete control of him had been dislodged and he had recovered from his hold over him. Kain was thankful; Had a human undergone such a transformation, there was no way their body could have handled turning back into a man without eventually killing them. The fact that it sought to take his body by growing over his existing body until it became strong enough to gain full control over his mind too aided his speeding recovery. While his body was changing, he was certain he sensed much going on around him. A distant mechanical whine and the sounds of two voiced arguing were all that met his pointed ears.

Resting against the structure before him for a moment, Kain fought to wrestle back his mind from the parasite induced confusion, when what apparently was a door opened before him. He rose to his feet and smirked at what he saw. Leon and Claire, staring wide-eyed at him like they had beheld a ghost.

"Kain!" They exclaimed in unison, but before Kain could board the train and explain to them his inhuman recovery, he found Claire and Leon gripping hold of his bare arms rather tightly.

"You have to go back and save Sherry!" Said Leon in his powerful but youthful growl of a voice.

"She went up in the elevator to save her mother and we can't get to her!"

"She's still infected with the G-virus parasite! You have to find a cure!"

Kain chuckled and raised an eyebrow. "I have barely been awake a few moment and already I am to fix the problems you could not solve for yourselves?" –

- There was an earth shattering rumbled followed by a computer voice "_Five minuets to detonation_"

The humour faded from Kains' face as he snarled; "You are cutting it somewhat close, aren't you?"

"Help her!" Yelled Claire. "You're a vampire; can't you save her in that time?"

"That is beside the point." Kain replied indifferently, starting to feel like his old, cruel self again.

-"You can't operate the train without us!" Pointed out Leon. "It has special locks on it for detecting biohazardous outbreaks, and detecting a vampire would count. I know for a fact me and Claire registered out handprints as guest on the lab computer so only we can disengage that lock and get the train to work!"

"I trust the lock will work whether your hand is attached to your arm or not?" Kain threatened, the unmistakable predatory look in his yellow eyes gleaming.

"The handprint lock works with the bodies own electrical field. A severed hand wouldn't work."

Kain tried to use his basic empathic skills that all predatory vampires had (it aided in the hunt) in order to tell whether the young officer was being truthful, but was so weak from the parasite and the experiments the scientists had subjected him to that he was simply not strong enough to delve past the young mans' strong will and into his mind.

"Very well . . .." Kain barked, and not forgetting to exchange threatening glares at both of the humans, jogged back into the laboratory,

The elevator that Sherry had apparently taken ascending into the labs at a 45-degree angle and so it wasn't difficult for the vampire to ascend, however what caught Kains' attention on the upward climb was that his red shawl he had left behind for Sherry and Claire as a signal as to the route he took lay suspiciously in one of the air vents along the side of the shaft. This vent was large enough for him to enter without assuming mist form and he collected the tatty piece of red fabric for sentiments sake. It was a clever idea; had Sherry followed the elevator all the way up, it would have taken him a good while to find the area where Annette Birkin had apparently fallen. From the vent, the scent of freshly spilt human blood wafted in from someplace unseen. It was possible that Sherry smelt it too, although it was remarkable that a human – with their insensitive pallets - could have picked up on such a scent.

Kain emerged into a corridor soaked in smears of bloody handprints. The deep neon yellow glow was once again familiar to him; this was one of the service corridors through which he had escaped all those nights ago, before the zombie phage was merely a foul taste of the blood – just a slight palatable trouble to him. He could tell - at least – that the blood was a woman's and thankfully not that of a female child. It pooled at the entrance of a service elevator that had quite literally and most conveniently finished its' decent down to Kains' level. He entered it and was taken on its automatic route to the upper levels of the laboratory, but hadn't prepared for the sensory tantalisation that the blood soaked elevator presented him with. He reached his destination; a small lab in the west section and followed the trail of human blood as swiftly as he could. The mechanical door to the main shaft whined open and with it a heady, saturating, musky odour of delicious fresh blood hit him.

The red blood was what he noticed first of all and it inflamed his hunger so suddenly that he didn't believe he could control himself-

- Until he saw Sherry, crouched by a crippled, blood stained form not ten feet in front of him. The blood of the young girls mother leaked through the walkway and disappeared in drops into the blackness below like crimson rain drawn to the darkness. Despite all her wounds, the woman still lived. She was a spirited one; that he had learnt at the beginning of this mess- and somehow she had struggled through half the lab to get here.

Sherry wasn't moving. Her blue eyes were like liquid pools of misery, rippling with hot tears. . . but something was wrong. . . Something about her didn't seem right to the vampire, and his uncertainties were confirmed in her next words:

"How can you have helped Dad make all this mess Mom?" She cried, crouched down in the blood of the beloved mother. That's what was wrong with her. Her sorrow was mixed with anger, an anger he would never have expected to feel from the child at the beginning of this night. In his absence, she had changed. She had to in order to survive. "You helped to kill so many people! Can you even begin to imagine how much suffering you've helped cause?"

"Sh. . . Sheh.. . .Sherry. . ." Annette struggled out, choking on her own blood and sadness. "I'm sorry I couldn't be a better mother to you. . ." Her voice was soft and melodic, like dark silk. A was a kindness in her that Kain didn't believe she was capable of. He could never understand the maternal instincts of females - even as a human – but had come so much closer to understanding than he could ever admit to with Sherry. "I'm sorry. . . for all the … h-horrible things that must have happened to . .. you. .. ." She raised a clutched hand feebly. Inside the fist was a phial of blue fluid. "Take it. It's my last gift to you." She fumbled with how to express the next part

"It's the vaccine that your.. . . that Will .. . ." She coughed up an unnerving amount of her blood. Kain was morbidly impressed; humans that had bled that much rarely had the will to hang on to life that long. "That should counteract the G-virus embryo inside you. . . I tried to stop the others from taking the virus. . .. but instead threw together a vaccine. . .I knew you would need it. . . William . . . and Moebiuses curse on him. . . he knew this would happen and tried to avert it. . . ignorance is bliss.. . .Moebius rid him of it. . . made his life all those years a living hell . . . I'm so sorry. . .for _everything._"

Sherry burst into floods of tears, clutching desperately hold of the broken body of her mother. She didn't care about the blood staining her white blouse. She wanted her mother more than anything else in the world and her heart desperately ached until the feelings of intense grief pierced into Kains soul. He snarled at the pain he felt, a pain unlike anything he had felt in a good long while. The parasite had drained him and left him incapable of closing his cruel mind to the onslaught of emotions alien to him. It left him feeling violated and enraged.

Kain clutched harshly at the small girl with one powerful claw and dragged her up, tearing her from her mourning.

"We haven't the time for your incessant whining!" He barked down at her. Sherry's upset expression pleaded up to him with watery deep blue eyes and Kain became aware that he had seriously hurt her feelings. He wasn't too thrilled at the idea of dragging a crying child all the way back to the train, so he swallowed his humungous pride and crouched down to her, wrapping the red shawl she left behind around his clawed fist and dried her eyes delicately with it. "The best way you can honour your mothers memory now is by staying alive, just as she intended." He said, plucking the G-vaccine from her balled fist of the dead mother. Sherry smiled back at him, and strangely enough, Kain found his fury dissolving. He had intended to threaten her that if ever she told anyone of this act of benevolence he would kill her but found most curiously that his hatred died with her smile.

The detonation would begin shortly and Kain hadn't the time to inject the anti-virus into Sherry. There was little point in saving her life if the labs exploded. Kain contemplated heading back the way he came, but it was too far to travel.

"There's an emergency elevator in the place that has that big yellow transport device." Sherry abruptly spoke up, wiping back her tears as if she had read Kains' mind. "Claire must've come through this way: it heads right down to the train. . . " Sherry shrived down into a tightly squeezed ball beside the corpse of her mother.

Kain huffed crossly. "We don't have the time to mourn!"

"It's not that, Kain." Sherry shook her head. "My stomach. . . It's been hurting all night. . ."

Kain clutched her by her arm once again. "Get up. We don't have any time!-" but Kain felt his throat tighten when Sherry went limp in his grasp. Kain took her up in his arms, her skin stained with her mothers blood and burning up, laced with a cold sweat. Whatever parasite had been implanted into her was draining Sherry of what little life force that remained within her. Sherrys' death at such a late stage would be a failure on Kains' part. Holding her tight under his arm, Kain quickened his pace to beyond human speed, racing across the platform trying to ignore the thunderous rumbling from the stretch of blackness above. Somewhere in the labs higher levels, parts were already starting to detonate. The countdown hadn't yet reach zero down in the lowest levels in which the section Kain was in was a part of as he rushed into the elevator and activated the emergency decent to the train platform. He hoped Claire and Leon hadn't left in their haste; the monitors in the train would have warned them that they were still alive. . .

Kain wasted no time in getting Sherry into the train with an eagerly awaiting Leon and Claire. Claire immediately dashed to take Sherry from his arms.

"What's happened to her?"

"It would take too long to explain." Kain pushed her aside and prepared the vaccine sample, however Claire wasn't deterred from her roll as 'mothering figure'. She cradled Sherrys' hot head in her cool lap semi-clad with pink denim whilst Leon hovered on the outskirts of the fuss. "Make yourself useful, boy and star the train!" Kain barked to the young, weary cop who immediately raced into the control room of the train and disappeared behind the mechanical doors.

A telescopic needle extended from the base of the vaccine tube and Kain inserted it into her wrist, unloading the thick blue contents into a part of her young body that Kain was sure had a heady flow of fresh blood to it. Now all that was left to do was wait for the vaccine to work its' magic. The G-vaccine was different from normal medical vaccines, in that it attacked the virus directly rather than injected a dead strain and wait for the body to find its' own cure. Right now, it was a luxury of time Sherry did not posses.

"Will she be alright?" Claire asked him with a rather innocent and naïve trust in Kains' opinion. Kain did not answer her.

Leon came dashing back into the room with a terrified look in his blue eyes. "There's no power to the train! I KNOW I put the plugs in to power it!" He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Kain, when your monster attacked me, it closed the gates to lure me out! Maybe it took out the plugs too?"

Kain snarled, finding the process of escape far too difficult than it would have been if he had been in control. "Then I'll check those plugs!" He spat.

-"I'll take care of Sherry." Claire suddenly spoke up and a prong of what Kain knew to be compassion shot through him. There was no point in refusing the truth; Kain was beginning to think of Sherry as his own daughter. He didn't know why or how it had happened. He didn't understand how one as heartless as him could have formed a bond with such a worthless being as an orphaned twelve year old human child, but he couldn't deny that it had occurred.-

- Now wasn't the time for reflection on his feelings.

Kain exited the train and climbed onto its roof, making his way onto the other side and to the area where the plugs were contained in a power transformer. It would have taken a human a full minuet to make the tip to the bridge to the other side of the platform, but with Kains' strength and speed that he had taken for granted for so long, it took him a matter of seconds.

As Leon had suspected, the plugs had been removed and lay on the floor before the power transformer. Kain reinserted them into the corresponding sockets and the lights of the train area intensified. With his simple task complete, Kain-

- Something off to Kains' right exploded out from one of the iron melting pools beyond the railing and landed behind him his a thunderous boom of power. It would seem that the Kain monster was not the only Raccoon City creature that could set traps. . .

Kain beheld the crouched on one knee form at the centre of the area in a dark brood of power, slowly it ascended to its' feet, brandishing - on both arms – vast bone claws, its' bald head a visage of threatening, ominous control. It possessed the slow, deliberate elegance of powerful movement that Kain – in his better hours – maintained. And when it finished its' ascent, it broke it's stone hard countenance and bellowed magnificently into the air, screaming out into the night for the blood of the vampire before it. Kain roared into the air subsequent to it, secretly to choke back the fear sneaking in with the new emotions brewing within him as a result of his connection with Sherry: Kain was weapon-less; no sword, no magic, no mortal weapons of handguns and machine guns – both of which he had acquired thought his journey but had not brought with him in his arrogance. William apparently had a more profound effect on him that he realised. Now, Kain was the one facing down a beast that he could not hope to defeat, as William had done to him at the beginning of the night.. . . also, Williams' fatherly desires had rubbed off on him too. Whether there was more to this than meets the eyes, Kain feared he would never know. . .

The beast flew at him, its massive bone claws shredding the concrete floor into clouds of dust and chips. Kain dived from its path, but it was a miracle that the power transformer was not damaged in the creatures savage assault, otherwise any chances of escape would have been destroyed. Now that he was at an advantage, he lashed out at it with his claws on its blackened greyish back, but found that although he tore skin, no blood gushed forth. Kain felt his optimism dwindling as the soulless, muscular beast turned to perform a well ordered slashing attack that's power tossed Kain to the other side of the area, into the railings of a large, red platform that ascended high above him apparently intended as a control platform for the iron smelting pools. Kain contemplated climbing its structure to safety, but then remembered he had rarely been know to flee from a fight. He had to flee from the paladin of the circle of nine – Malek – and it had caused his sinister soul to burn like a million suns. This fiend was possessed an air of unwavering strength that the paladin lacked – who had struck him as more of a man who became easily frustrated when met with an adversary of equal ability. This things soulless grimace gave no hint as to its state of mind – if it was even capable of one. Kain was weak and weapon-less. It was strong beyond belief.

"Don't let it end like this. . . ." Kain snarled wearily through gritted fangs. –

-"KAIN!" A holler from somewhere above – the platform – someone was on the platform he was leaning against.

Kain and looked directly up at the figure of a man standing above twelve feet above him. It had been a male voice, but. . ..

- but it wasn't _human_. It wasn't even a vampire. Kain hadn't a clue as to what it was. Glowing eyes – blue skin – skeletal body – cloven hands and feet like one of the ancients of his kind and a face obscured by a brown shawl that bore a distinctive pattern upon it. It was a creature unlike anything the Umbrella scientists could ever contrive and it's familiarity with his name caused Kain to fall to the conclusion that this strange demon was Nosgothic in origin. Kain was so consumed in the sheer madness of its form that he hadn't noticed the tubular deceive it held in its claws.

"USE THIS!" It called down to him, and tossed him the device. No sooner had it done this, the creature turned and vanished into the labyrinthine facility, tatter cape-like remnants of blue wings the last thing Kain saw of this strange creature.

"Wait – How do you know me?" But it was too late.

Remembering what was going on, Kain dived to his side, narrowly avoiding a slice from the ordered beast and collected his thoughts as to what it was the blue wraith-like creature had tossed him. It was a human weapon loaded with two titanic rockets. A rocket launcher. Kain smiled. In his brief existence in 'peace-time' Raccoon City, he recalled seeing this device in action on a screen in an electronics store. This device was capable of annihilating completely any given target.

Kain aimed the device, propping its heavy tubular form on his shoulder and the viewfinder highlighted his emotionless target with a red cross, mindlessly unaware to the lethal weapon Kain aimed for its torso. Kain felt it necessary – almost compelled – to say something;

"Vae Victus. . ." And he fired. The moment played out in slow motion to him, the steaming trail left behind by the rocket barely had time to hang in the air before the missile met its target. A thunderous boom and the beast was blown into an inky dust baptised in fire and force. Kain had fired at fairly close range so was almost thrown to the floor by the blast. He paused briefly only to smirk, the turned his back on the fiery scene of exploded body parts and proceeded to the train –

- Only it started to move. Before he had a chance to ask himself why, a thunderous belch of fire burst from the corridors leading back to the laboratory. The detonation was happening. Claire and Leon had waited to the last possible moment to make their escape. Kain had to admire their spirit despite all they had been through but he wasn't going to let them leave him behind. The train was still accelerating, Kain jogged, flanking it and then clutched to a ladder on the side of the transportation, hauling himself from the platform but his moment of triumph didn't last long. The platform started to fall down around the escaping train and Kain was left dangerously vulnerable. He slid between the two segments of the train narrowly avoiding the burst of flames that lapped at the sides of the train as it disappeared into the tunnel like grasping hands of the Satan.

Meanwhile inside, Claire and Leon pressed against the floor of the carriage to avoid the deadly blast as the laboratory came crashing down behind the rapidly accelerating train, Claire covering young Sherry from the cloud of dust and debris being blown through their transport. Sherry had awakened from the fever, seemingly as good as new, but her cold sweat hadn't gone away. She summoned all her strength and pushed Claire off from on top of her.

"What are you going?" Was all that Claire could get out before she dashed down the compartment towards the automatic double doors at the end.

"Kain! We left him behind! He was trying to save us!"-

-A crashing jolt shook Sherry from her feet and thumped to the ground. Her hip throbbed excruciatingly even after she struck the cold steel floor that was vibrating hypnotically beneath her body from the speed it was travailing at. Claire dragged herself to Sherry.

"He did save us, Sherry. He got the train running again, just in time for us to escape.. ."-

- The mechanical double doors whirled open and in – seemingly unphased by his ordeal – strode a confident Kain, still equipped with the Rocket Launcher the bizarre blue monster had surrendered to him in his most challenging hour.

"Kain!" Sherry squealed and threw herself at him. An uncomfortable vampire patted his pale-clawed hand apprehensively on the young girls head, feeling the eyes of the two other young humans burn into him with a mixture of conflicting emotions. Claire and Leon were unusually compassionate for humans (though much human literature reveres the non-existent benevolence of the common man) therefore they purely could not understand how such a virtuous young girl as Sherry Birkin could form such an strong emotional bond to monster they completely understood to be a black hearted, foul, despicable fiend whom if he had encountered Sherry under any other circumstance, he wouldn't have thought twice about tearing her open for her blood, doubtlessly enjoying every perverse minuet of it. Yet they suspected Sherry knew this every bit as well as they did and had come to trust and respect him, despite of his obvious evil. If she could see goodness in the heart of the most wicked monster of them all - then despite her transformation into the strong willed young girl she had become under his guidance - then she still possessed the warm heart she had before this night and had not lost it to the horrors of Raccoon City as they all feared.

Leon and Claire slowly warmed to a smile, serving to provoke Kains' feelings of great unease even further. Sherry beamed up at Kain with watery but loving, innocent eyes.

"I thought I'd lost you for good, Kain.. . ." Sherry sobbed.

Kain struggled to find the words through spiralling emotions of anger, embarrassment and self-loathing yet guilt, a feeling of purpose and a powerful desire to protect Sherry. In the end he struggled out the words:

". . And I am . . . pleased to see that you are well." Sherry released him and stepped back, inquisitively gauging his response with her naïve blue eyes. Kain offered little resistance to his feelings of discomfort in the hope that it would deter her from any future displays of passion. She didn't get the hint, a warm smile beaming from her innocent face.

Claire and Leon rose to their feet, a kind of mystified oblivion taking over their war-torn features. Kain knew what he was seeing despite their perplexing behaviour; they couldn't believe that the nightmare was over and they had come out of it with their lives. Kain found it astonishing, too - that any human could have survived such an onslaught of aggression and violence. Perhaps the humans of this world shared little in common with their Nosgothic cousins. . . .

- "So it's finally over. . ." Leon spoke up, his voice low – riskily sorrowful, as if there was something about this night he could miss -

"No. . ." Said Claire. "I still have to find my brother Chris. . ."

Leon nodded. "Your right. . . This is just the beginning. . ." He turned to Kain. "What about you?"

"Umbrella must poses a means of sending me back to Nosgoth." Said Kain. "Until then I will do all in my power to bring them down for the disgusting humiliation they have bestowed unpon me for the past seven years. . ."

Claire smiled warmly. That was Kains' way of telling them that he would stick by them in their fight against the company that committed this act of unspeakable evil. He just wasn't as quick as the others to pledge loyalty to any cause other than his own. There was no question about it; now that they were on their way to freedom, the desire for vengeance burned within them. It was a righteous kind of vengeance; the desire to avenge the many who died in a most disgusting fashion imaginable shrouding there own – possibly selfish - need for revenge. There was one difference between Claire, Leon and Sherry and those who suffered the horrors of Raccoon City; Claire, Leon and Sherry were still alive. Alive, but dead their lives were no longer their own. Leon entered Raccoon City with the hope of finding a new life as an R.P.D officer. Sherry – innocent, defenceless little Sherry – had lost her parents and taken a gun to the walking corpses that roamed the dead city, losing her virtue. . . Yes, Umbrella had-

- There was an earth shattering thump that rocked the whole train, sending Leon and Claire to steel clad ground with a painful thump. Kain instinctively clutched the back of Sherrys' collar causing her to dangle between the floor and his grasp, preventing her from falling. Kain was relived to see he could do this; despite everything he had been through, his inhuman strength and speed were returning.-

- A shrill ring cut through the tense atmosphere like a razor-sharp knife and every warning light on the modern train flashed red, bathing everything in a blood red like as if it were a prelude of things to come, yet somehow failing to mask the pail look of terror that befell Leon and Claires' faces.

A mechanical voice boomed from the loud speaker "Warning. Warning. The self-destruct system has been activated. Each train compartment will detonate sequentially. I repeat. Each train compartment will detonate sequentially."

"What!" Exclaimed Leon. The sentiment was shared. They'd survived all that horror, and now this! It was as if some divine force was determined to put them down.

Kain regained his composure. "There's no time for mindless musings at to what it could be; we cannot have more than five minuets to stop this train and if I don't find out what triggered the alarm, there may not be anyone left to stop the train by that time." Kain picked up the rocket launcher the strange demon had tossed which still had one remaining rocket and proceeded into the back of the train-

- " Kain?" Spoke up Sherry. Kain paused, not turning but tilting his head downwards. At that moment, Sherry struggled with her words. What could she say to him? He had survived so much; he had proven he could handle himself but Sherry felt that if she didn't say something now, his luck would change. "Be careful." Was all she could manage. The words were plain, but their mean – to her – was intense and although Kain had his back to her, she could have sworn that she felt him smile. . .

Kain proceeded into the train and the automatic doors whirled closed behind him, clicking locked no doubt initiated by the trains' computer in order to prevent. Claire and Leon looked surprised and shocked by this development, but Kain and Sherry both had a gut feeling this would happen: after all, it was the final confrontation and there would be no prizes for guessing who – or by now, what – Kain was going to face down.

Kain proceeded with caution down the suspiciously empty carriage at the very back of the train. It was wide and possessed no clutter for the enemy to hide behind and that frustrated him. William was on board; he could _smell _the thick oily, chemically animal musk of an odour that the mutation possessed in far more subtle qualities when he last encountered him. Now, Kain felt as if he could drown in the artificial animal smell that battered his frayed yet powerful inhuman senses. Even a human would be overwhelmed by the stench. It thickened as he cautiously approached the back of the train, yet the found nothing. "Where are you?" He barked, as if expecting an answer –

- And he got one. A thunderous crash and a panel from the roof of the train crashed down, clipping his left should as he dived to one side, the sharp edge drawing blood. It was immediately preceded by a long, thick discoloured tentacle that swept searchingly from side to side, it's vigorous movements slowed by the sheer size and bulk of it. And dashed back to the entrance doors – now locked (or at least he assumed) – to avoid its' destructive probing, the forceful sluggish swipes denting the metal walls which it hit. Kain could only watch as a colossal gelatinous bulk oozed forcefully through the meter-squared hole in the roof and in a matter of seconds, the entire back half of the train was filled with a giant beanbag-like beast, a puckered opening in its' centre rimmed with discoloured, dagger-like teeth that, as the gaping mouth in its' centre clenched, bearing the smaller teeth near its epicentre. Four giant tentacles emerged from the bulk and slammed into the walls. Acting like anchors, the mass dragged itself closer to him. . .-

- No more time to watch. Kain threw up the rocket launcher, resting its measurable bulk on one shoulder and fired off a rocket aimed at its' disgusting hole of a 'mouth'. There was a thunderous explosion that threatened to throw Kain off his feet, the beast obscured by the thick fog of smoke. Kain dared to wonder if he had beaten it -

-Until it emerged from the fog, its' thick tentacles hauling the beast through the cloud and now it had almost halve the distance between them. One more pull, and it'd be right on top of him.

Kain snarled and tried the doors, to his relief, finding that they were unlocked after all. Racing out into the gap between the two train compartments, Kain was hit by the night air like a wall of icy dread. The tunnel raced past him at an alarming rate: Jumping off at this speed was no option. . .

"Kain!" A voice from the compartment that housed his comrades. "The door won't open!" Bleated a terrified Sherry Birkin, her voice muffled by the metal between them. "Leon and Claire used their 'Guest' clearance to unlock the compartment you were in but this door requires executive clearance!"

Kain shot a look behind him when his pointed ears were greeted with the mechanical whine of the door behind him and saw the claw- rimmed mouth of the beast literally inches from opening. It was too late to ask if the could lock it. . .

Kain looked back at Sherry. "Get away from the door! Try to stop the train!"

"Stop the train? How?" Kain had disappeared from the window on the door. _"Christ_," though Sherry. _"He's become weak by vampire standards but he's still superhuman. . ."_ Sherry snapped out of her thought and raced away from her door, as per Kains' request. Leon and Claire, still fiddling with what little controls were in this section of the train, noticed her movement and panic-strickenly shot a look to the door she had fled from just in time to see it buckle under the immense strength of the monsters tentacle attack. Sherry steeled herself despite the adrenaline-induced terror. Frowning defiantly at the attack that lurked beyond those doors, she came up with a plan.. . . The control room was locked, but there was a vent connecting the two . .

"Hey Sherry! Where're you going!" Shouted Leon as he caught a glimpse of the young girls feet disappearing into the vent. Moments later, there was a click and the door whirled open.

"Get in! Quick!" They didn't argue. Sherry pressed the door release again to lock it.

"Sherry, where's Kain!" Asked Claire, but her words fell on def ears. Sherry was busy examining the control pad for some kind of emergency stop.. . .

"Where the hell is it?" Sherry asked herself. –

- The hatch of the ceiling abruptly flew open and by the instinct drummed into them from the numerous surprise attacks made on them through this night, Claire, Leon and Sherry snatched at their weapons and aimed up at the creature above them -

- It was Kain.

"Thank God!" Beamed Sherry.

"Hey," Spoke up Leon. "Maybe it's this one!" Leon slapped his palm on a big red button that had been hideing next to the door the whole time.

"Not now you fool!" Protested Kain, but it was too late. The trains screamed as the breaks squeezed on the wheels and metal fought with metal, causing sparks to fly. The force of the sudden stop threw Kain forwards, causing him to land on top of them of the group that had been bunched up into the small room. There wasn't enough time to protest against Leon's stupidity. Kain jumped up and clutched hold of the opening, swinging effortlessly up and onto the roof. He gave them a hand up and they wasted no time in climbing down into the tunnel. There was no time for words. They exchanged defiant glances when from the control room they had literally been in seconds ago came a tremendous thud and a screech of buckling metal. Some of tentacles had burst free through the walls of the train, now moving up towards them at the front of the carriage, searching for a prey to squeeze the very life force out of.

"Run!" Yelled Leon. He didn't have to tell them twice. They sped of the light at the end of the tunnel with every ounce of strength left in their tortured bodies, knowing full well that if they didn't make this one final push, the explosion of the train would move along the tunnel and end their nightmare in a wholly different manner from the way that was literally within grasping reach of them. It felt like a final race against their own mortality; the last test to see whether they truly were worthy of surviving this night.

- And the were-

- But only by the narrowest of margins-

Sherry hit the dirt outside the tunnel along with the other three barely in time to miss the devastating ball of fire that exploded out of the tunnel and dispersed into the air above them accompanied by the greatest bellow of an detonation any of them had ever heard. It was as if the tortured souls of Raccoon city had escaped through that tunnel in a destructive blast of white-hot pain and misery, and as the last wispy shards of flame tangled into the blue sky, Sherry knew it was over. . .

At least for now. . .

"So it's over . . . " Murmured Sherry. If it was over, then why did she feel exactly the same? She looked over to Claire and then Leon. They smiled warmly and wearily to her, but Kain. . . Kain looked angry. . . though he always seemed to.

Kain was the first to get to his feet.

"What's wrong?" Enquired Leon, staggering to his feet to meet him. "Is something following us?"

"No. . ." Said Kain with a thoughtful tone of voice.

"So then what's the problem?" Asked Claire.

Kain smirked that wicked smirk of his and directing his attention to little Sherry Birkin, who had grown to be so much like his own daughter on that night, said:

"It's up to us to take out Umbrella."


End file.
